Cut Up Issue 2

Page 1

CUT UP

ISSUE 2

copy left death to mediaocrity


John W. Parsons: Anti-Christ Superstar Rocket scientist by day, occultist by night, John Whiteside Parsons reflects the unknown America of the ’50s. words: richard metzger

death to mediaocrity


“All stories are true, every last one of them. All myths, all legends, all fables. If you believe them true, then they are true. If you don’t believe them, then all that can be said is that they are true for someone else.” – Dave Sim, Cerebus When the history of the American space program is finally written, no figure will stand out quite like John Whiteside Parsons. Remarkably handsome, dashing and brilliant, “Jack” Parsons was one of the founders of the experimental rocket-research group at Cal Tech. The group’s seven-acre Arroyo Seco testing facility would eventually become Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA’s rocket design center. Werner von Braun claimed it was the self-taught Parsons, not himself, who was the true father of the American space program for his contribution to the development of solid rocket fuel. A l t h o u g h Pa r s o n s has been memorialized with a statue at JPL and has had a crater on the dark side of the moon named in his honor, his story remains shrouded in mystery. For what is

death to mediaocrity


little known about this legend of aerospace engineering is that he was an avid practitioner of the occult sciences, and for several years, Aleister Crowley’s hand-picked leader of the US branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Southern California-based Agape4 Lodge. Parsons was born in Los Angeles on October 2, 1914, the son of a wealthy and well-connected family living in a sprawling mansion on Pasadena’s “Millionaire Row.” His father worked for Woodrow Wilson. After his parents’ divorce, a solitary childhood imbued him with a deep hatred of a u t h o r i t y, a n d a c o n t e m p t f o r a n y s o r t o f interference in his activity. Parsons’ interest in the occult apparently commenced at an early age. In one of his diaries he claimed to have visibly evoked Satan at the tender age of 13. Parsons joined the Agape4 Lodge in 1941 after discovering Crowley’s philosophy of Thelema (Greek for “true will”). Wilfred T. Smith, the expatriate Englishman who started the order in the early 1930s with a charter from the Great Beast himself, wrote of Parsons in a letter to Crowley: “I think I have at long last a really excellent man, John Parsons. And starting next Tuesday he begins a course of talks with a view to enlarging our scope. He has an excellent mind and much better intellect than myself... John Parsons is going to be valuable.”

death to mediaocrity


Another member of the Lodge, Crowley’s longtime friend, actress Jane Wolfe described Parsons as “26 years of age, 6’2”, vital, potentially bisexual at the very least, University of the State of California and Cal Tech, now engaged in Cal Tech chemical laboratories developing ‘bigger and better’

explosives for Uncle Sam. Travels under sealed orders from the government. Writes poetry – ‘sensuous only’, he says. Lover of music, which he seems to know thoroughly. I see him as the real successor of Therion [Crowley]. Passionate; and has

death to mediaocrity


made the vilest analyses result in a species of exaltation after the event. Has had mystical experiences which gave him a sense of equality all round, although he is hierarchical in feeling and in the established order.” Parsons rose quickly through the ranks, taking over the Agape4 Lodge from Smith at Crowley’s decree within a year. “For I am BABALON, and she my daughter, unique and there shall be no other women like her.” – The Book of Babalon, verse 37 In one of the most celebrated feats in magickal history, Parsons and the pre-Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard (whose role is too complicated to describe in this short essay) performed “The Babalon Working,” a daring attempt to shatter the boundaries of time and space. The intention was to bring about, in Parsons’ own words, “love, understanding, and Dionysian freedom... the necessary counterbalance or correspondence to the manifestation of Horus.” The above reference recalls Crowley’s announcement of the Aeon of Horus, described in his Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis). It was a blasphemous, strangely beautiful prose poem which Crowley “received” from a discarnate entity called

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


Aiwass in Cairo in 1904. Crowley, self-styled “Great Beast 666,” considered himself the avatar of the Antichrist, and the Book of the Law was a proclamation that the era of the “slave gods” (Osirus, Mohammed, Jesus) had come to an end and that the Age of Horus and “the Crowned and Conquering Child” had begun. In its infancy, Crowley predicted, the Aeon would be characterized by the magickal formula of bloodshed and blind force, the tearing down of the established orders to make way for the new. Crowley held the two World Wars as evidence of this. He didn’t see the Horus-force as evil, however. He saw it as an expression of the innocence of a hyperactive child who is like a bull in a china shop. Babalon, a Thelemic counterpart of Kali or Isis, was described by Parsons as, “... black, murderous and horrible, but Her hand is uplifted in blessing and reassurance: the reconciliation of opposites, the apotheosis of the impossible.” The impossible was precisely what Jack Parsons, the scientific sorcerer, had in mind.

Lucifer Rising. In its initial stages, The Babalon Working was intended to attract an “elemental” to serve as a partner for Parsons’ elaborate sex magick rituals. The method employed would be the solo VIII Degree

death to mediaocrity


working of the OTO, the quasi-Masonic organization reformulated by Crowley in the earlier part of the century in accordance with his “Do What Thou Wilt” mythos of Thelema. Parsons used his “magickal wand” to whip up a vortex of energy so the elemental would be summoned. Translated into plain English, Pa r s o n s j e r k e d o ff in the na m e o f s p ir it ua l advancement while Hubbard (referred to as “The Scribe” in the diary of the event) scanned the astral plane for signs and visions. Apparently, it worked. In a letter to Crowley dated February 23, 1946, Parsons exclaimed “I have my elemental! She turned up one night after the conclusion of the Operation, and has been with me since.” The elemental was a green-eyed flaming redhead named Marjorie Cameron (she would later appear in Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome), an artist of some reknown and a primary force in the New Age “Goddess” movement). Cameron was only too happy to participate in Parson’s sex magick and now Parsons could get down to the real business of the Babalon Working: the birthing of a “moonchild” or homunculus. The operation was supposed to open an interdimensional doorway, rolling out the red carpet for the appearance of the goddess Babalon in human form. The Enochian Calls [angelic language] of Elizabethan magus John Dee

death to mediaocrity


and the attraction of the sex force of the duo’s copulation would be employed to this end. As Paul Rydeen points out in his extended essay “Jack Parsons and the Fall of Babalon”: “The purpose of Parsons’ operation has been underemphasized. He sought to produce a magickal child who would be a product of her environment rather than of her heredity. Crowley himself describes the Moonchild in just these terms. The Babalon Working itself was preparation for what was to come: a Thelemic messiah.” To wit: Babalon incarnate as a living female, the Scarlet Woman as consort to the Antichrist, bride of the Beast 666. In effect, Parsons

also claimed the mantle of Antichrist for himself, as the magickal heir of Crowley prophesied in Liber AL:

death to mediaocrity


“The child of thy bowels, he shall behold them [the mysteries of the Apocalypse]. Expect him not from the East, nor from the West, for from no expected house cometh that child.” Without the Scarlet Woman, the Antichrist cannot make his manifestation. The eschatological formula must first be complete. In whiter words, with the magickal rites of the Babalon Working, it was Parsons’ goal to bring on the Apocalypse. “Only in the irrational and unknown direction can we come to it [wisdom] again” – Jack Parsons in a letter to Marjorie Cameron, late 1940s. Who is the greater hero – he who prolongs the agony of this pathetic existence or he who opens wide the Pandora’s Box of perdition knowing that this is how the final eschatological chapter must play itself out? Just as the rocket scientist Parsons was willing to play dice with heavy explosives, Parsons, the nuclear age warlock was willing to play with fire of a very different sort. If the “Great Work” is the cosmic perfection of humankind, the final goal of the alchemists, then Parsons fits firmly within a fraternity of Western Magi that includes Moses, Solomon, Jesus Christ, John Dee, Adam Weishaupt,

death to mediaocrity


Crowley, Gurdjieff and Timothy Leary – great revolutionaries and liberators all. Parsons wrote in his “Manifesto of the Anti-Christ”: “An end to the pretense, and lying hypocrisy of Christianity. An end to the servile virtues, and superstitious restrictions. An end to the slave morality. An end to prudery and shame, to guilt and sin, for these are of the only evil under the sun, that is fear. An end to all authority that is not based on courage and manhood, to the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police, and an end to the servile flattery and cajolery of mods, the coronations of mediocraties, the ascension of dolts.” Amen to that! Parsons was clearly willing to put his money where his mouth was! Abbie Hoffman, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos and Che Guevara seem total pussies in comparison. Forget your Conspiracy Theory 101. The Illuminati are not the bad guys and George Bush has never been a member, nor has Henry Kissinger. If, in the words of Christ, it’s by their fruits and works that men shall be judged, would you want the Mai Lai massacre or the Gulf War slaughter staining your karma?

death to mediaocrity


Hey, being the Antichrist is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. It’s not a black and white world anymore. A Magickal Call to Arms. “Parsons opened a door and something flew in.” – Kenneth Grant, Outside the Circles of Time. Did the Babalon Working actually work? If you believe it to be true, it’s true enough. As a metaphor or myth to explain the psychic and atmospheric turbulence taking place in the world today, it certainly works for me. What has long been prophesied by the world’s major spiritual traditions is now coming to pass. Turn on CNN for a couple of hours for ample proof: wars, killer viruses, floods, famines, violent crime, earthquakes, Armageddon cults armed with nerve gas, suicide bombers; Heaven’s Gate; the list goes on and on. Certainly Parsons untimely death in a 1952 chemical explosion would leave the crown of the “conquering child” unclaimed to this day as Thelemites continue to await their Chaos Messiah, but perhaps Parsons was an Antichrist and his particular mission was to crack open the Apocalyptic gateway and activate the occult forces necessary for the upheaval of consciousness.

death to mediaocrity


The apostles of the new forms of gnosis unearthed by the Babalon Working will be art, the inspired initiator of sacred science and the torch of Gods appearing in new and unexpected forms in the unfolding of the divine drama. The poets, artists, philosophers and thinkers will form the first ranks of perfected humanity and no rules will apply save for freedom and nobility beyond the Kali Yuga. But this will not happen without a struggle between the forces of control, black magick, and oppressive boredom on one hand and the Luciferian agents of wisdom, unleashed creativity and anarchic rebellion on the other. What we have been brainwashed to believe is “good”: patriotism, so-called “free” enterprise, private property, Christianity (not the teachings of Christ, but the hateful travesty that the religion bearing his name has become thanks to the likes of Pat Robertson), is now beginning to be seen by the emerging generation of the crowned and conquering child to be the deathtrip bullshit it is. A whole culture is collapsing and a new one is about to be born. Jack Parsons would be pleased.

death to mediaocrity


own your media, bitch!

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


donald cammell vision on

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/1359/upkl.mp4

death to mediaocrity


skin trade

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


tatToo You

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


GE T T I NG H IGH ON ASTRAL WEEKS... words: dean cavanagh

“It’s the great search, fueled by the belief that through these musical and mental processes illumination is attainable. Or may at least be glimpsed” – Lester Bangs writing on Astral Weeks 1975. It’s not only unfair and illogical but it’s also impossible to actually say that an album is the greatest ever recorded. What is possible is to keep going back to an album and falling in love with it over and over again. With each new listen you find even more magick, truth and illumination. Each new listen can capture that first “time”, can transport you back to a day, hour, minute or second when something that only means anything to you is relived and your blood suddenly runs faster or warmer or even colder. A fragment of now materially dead time that pulsates back to life and either haunts you with beauty or horror. There is only one album that does that for me. Singles are a different kettle. There are a few that flood my mind with Proustian flashbacks: Pete Wylie’s “Story Of The Blues”, “Jesamine” by The Casuals, “Clash City Rockers”, “Hey Jude”, Bowie’s “Rock & Roll Suicide” and Tobi Legend’s “Time Will Pass

death to mediaocrity


You By” and all have the same impact on my psyche when I hear them. They instantly transport me, move me, make me sad for times past but hopeful for times to come. They are fundamentally magic, in the sense that they can transform and illuminate but by their very nature and short format they don’t take you a journey for over an hour, obviously. They are created as a ‘glimpse’; either of the now, the past or the future, and because of that they leave you wanting more. If magical singles are a glimpse of the hereafter of the near death patient on the operating table, magical albums are a first class return journey to heaven/hell. A flatline, taking you to a place that is only reached once you have

death to mediaocrity


completely shed your ego and fears and have tacitly agreed to give yourself over to the artist taking you on that trip. Out of all the albums I have listened to — a multitude of times over the years — nothing comes close as Astral Weeks by Van Morrison to moving me spiritually, physically and mentally. Neil Young’s After The Goldrush is probably the album that I have played as much, but even its magnificence can’t orbit the same inner galaxy that Astral Weeks does. I have never played an album and instantly fallen in love with it. The same applies to singles. I generally need to listen a few times to a piece of music for it to seep into my mind and make me want to hear it again. Astral Weeks is the exception. On first hearing it I was mesmerized, and when I say mesmerized I mean I was hypnotized, rendered speechless and lost all track of linear time. All this whilst sober and in tip top mental and physical condition (it was a long time ago). The first song on the eight song album is the eponymous ‘Astral Weeks’. Van firmly sets up the psycho-geography stall with his opening, ‘If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dreams…where immobile steel rims crack and the ditch in the back-road stops”. Another piece of Irish magic similarly sets out its stall from the opening line. “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”— Finnegan’s Wake, James Joyce. Margot Norris wrote of that introduction, “The opening of Finnegan’s Wake drops us, without map, clock, compass, glossary,

death to mediaocrity


or footnotes, into an unknown verbal country, and the voice of the tour guide, alas, speaks their language rather than ours, although we catch enough cognates to keep from drowning altogether in that verbal stream.” If Finnegan’s Wake is regarded as the most sublime and impenetrable work of literary fiction ever recorded, surely Astral Weeks must be it’s musical equivalent. Both pieces firmly inform the reader/listener that they are about to be taken on a journey. An idiosyncratic and rather perilous journey right to the very core of one man’s mind/soul. Both proclamations warn the participant that they are not in for an easy, satisfying ride, and that they are in fact being invited into a spiritual realm. A realm that is neither fully perilously nocturnal nor fully bathed in the safety and comfort of daylight.

Both James Joyce and Van Morrison alluded to the fact that there was really no explanation for their masterpieces…that the words “came” to them is fundamentally what they said, and once you

death to mediaocrity


explore both works it’s hard to imagine how else these creations could have materialized. There is a really strong argument that both works were ‘spiritually automatic’. Every line, chord, pause, inflection, stammer and ad-lib in Astral Weeks is pointing to something beyond everyday comprehension. It points inwards and outwards simultaneously. It reaches into your soul with one hand and punches its way into the material universe with the other, whilst all the while keeping you tethered and recognizing that you are of the earthly plane. It’s actually frightening to imagine being chemically altered — either by booze or narcotic or hallucinogenic — whilst listening to it. It’s something I have always resisted doing because I believe any stimulant would push me over some kind of metaphorical ledge. Astral Weeks is a narcotic in itself. One word that always comes to kind when thinking about Astral Weeks is ‘Big’. Big in the sense that it has no boundaries and can not be contained. The feeling of being enveloped in its ever expanding world is so strong and sometimes overwhelming that you are stunned into a reflective submission. It can make you feel like a romantic warrior one minute and a gibbering emotional wreck the next; constantly throwing you into huge and deep eternal spaces. Lester Bangs wrote of Astral Weeks, “you’re probably wondering when I’m going to get around to telling you about Astral Weeks. As a matter of fact, there’s a whole lot of Astral Weeks I don’t even want to tell you about. Both because whether you’ve heard it or not it wouldn’t be fair for me to impose my interpretation of such lapidary subjective imagery on you, and because in many cases I don’t really know what he’s talking about. He (Van Morrison) doesn’t either.”

death to mediaocrity


James Joyce said of Finnegan’s Wake: “what is clear and concise can’t deal with reality, for to be real is to be surrounded by mystery.” He could have been describing Astral Weeks. Astral Weeks obviously isn’t as wordy or complex or annoyingly puzzling as Finnegan’s Wake, but it shares a rhythmic mantra and creates a feeling of awe in the reader/listener and leaves a psychic tattoo that can only be understood or deciphered by the one whom it has been tattooed on to. For pure hypnotism one only needs to listen to ‘Beside You’. It’s a Dervish mantra in praise of the Holy Ghost; only Van has managed to materialize the HG and he’s dressing it in flesh and making it move around the corporeal plane whilst he serenades it. In ‘Beside You’ is the line, “Way across the country where the hillside mountain glide…the dynamo of your smile caressed the barefoot virgin child to wander.” Poetry that puts laureates to shame. ‘All’ of them. All those earnest, emotionally tortured, pontificating pederasts and ‘Men Hating’ creatures and self aggrandizing ‘victims’ and state stipend leeches and cultural looters. In that one breath Van elevates ‘rock music’ above all other art forms, especially poetry. He takes words into a new frontier of imagery, and he does it with toughness and stoicism that is truly breathtaking and heroic. There is absolutely nothing sentimental in the words and music of Astral Weeks because Astral Weeks is of ‘no time’. You can’t get sentimental over a ‘time’ that is neither fully in the here, then or whenever. In ‘Madame George’, Van uses the line, “You’re caught up playing dominoes in drag.” to paint an heart ripping portrait of a Transvestite out of time, out of place and out of the realm of everyday comprehension. The quintessential poem of alienation would reverberate in the most closed and homophobic of minds.

death to mediaocrity


It’s minimalism turns hearts of stone to rivulets of blood…that’s assuming the listener is human of course. In ‘The Way Young Lovers Do’, Van’s imagery is dizzying, disorientating and mystifying even though on paper it looks like a simple couple of lines reverberating on themselves, “Then we sat on our own star, and dreamed of the way that we were and the way that we were meant to be…then we sat on our own star and dreamed of the way that I was for you and you were for me.” Again, Van Morrison is up there with James Joyce playing celtic mind games and creating cerebral loops and glitches in time with his words. The second time I decided to ‘really’ listen to Astral Weeks in its entirety I knew I had to find somewhere special to listen to it. It was the early 1980’s and I was in Spain on holiday. I hired a motorbike and rode out to Altea on the southern coast. No helmet and wearing only shorts I sped out into the sunshine with a Sony Walkman and a cassette tape of Astral Weeks in my pocket. I found a completely deserted white beached cove, laid down, put the headphones on and listened. Maybe I ‘willed’ myself into having an hallucinatory experience, in fact I definitely did, it was all conscious, but what happened can only be described as natural hallucination; pure, unadulterated, unaided by any narcotics whatsoever. I laid on the beach bathed in the hot sun, my eyes closed, hearing the sea water lapping the beach over the sound of Astral Weeks…and then I was transported. It is the only time I have ‘tripped‘ or ‘psychically voyaged’ or whatever you want to call it without the aid of stimulants. What you could only describe as a natural high. The journey kicked in halfway through the opening track and ended long after the last track. I reckon two hours or thereabouts. On

death to mediaocrity


this ‘trip’ — for want of a better word — I was taken to places and times that I couldn’t even begin to try and describe or do justice to in common language. These were universes within universes within my mind and they were being opened up by Astral Weeks. No other album has ever opened up these polar extremes in my psyche, and God knows I have tried to find other albums that do it. At its core Astral Weeks is a personal record. Personal to Van Morrison and personal to the listener. I don’t believe it’s for everyones taste — and that’s not being snobbish — because not everyone wants the same experience from a piece of music. I must have wanted to be taken on a journey by it. I like to believe that my experience of listening to Astral Weeks was a magickal experience outside the realms of linear time and objective reality and I suppose because I do ‘believe’ it, it really was magickal and it really did get me high that day on the beach.

death to mediaocrity


Doo right, yoo doo right, doo right, yoo doo right Doo right, yoo doo right, doo right, yoo doo right Doo right, yoo doo right, doo right, yoo doo right - I'm in love with my girl an' she's away - Man, you gotta move on, man, you gotta move on, man I need your help, I need your love today Once I was blind but now I see Now that you're in love with me You made a believer out o'me, babe You made a believer out o'me- When they ask what's wrong I say o.k. I'm in love with my girl, she's away Man, gotta move on, man, you gotta move on, man I need your help, I need your love today - Once I was blind, now I can see - Now that you're in love with me You made a believer out o'me, babe You made a believer out o'me, she says When they ask what's wrong I say I'm o.k. Man, gotta move on, man, you gotta move on, man - I'm in love with my girl, she's gone away this day - A drum beat 21 hours a day - Once I was blind, now I can seeOnce I was blind but now I can see...

CAN death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


some

THRObbing gristle records

words: john doran - shared from the quietus

death to mediaocrity


“You’re a load of fucking wankers. If they’ve got something to say, why don’t you let them say it instead of just sitting there like a load of tits; like a load of wankers. Could you do any better? You’ve got nothing to say. You’re just idiots y’know. You’re so bloody ignorant it’s unbelievable. Go on! Come on! Anyone think they know what they’re talking about? No? You’re a load of fucking wankers, you really are.” An unnamed Brighton DJ shouting at an unappreciative TG audience, March 26, 1976 These records were never supposed to be repressed. The inventors of industrial music, Throbbing Gristle, raised £150 to form Industrial Records and then another £700 in 1977 to get 785 copies of The Second Annual

Report pressed. They’d already self-released two albums which they’d given to friends on cassette but their first official release was going to be a

death to mediaocrity


compilation of live ‘documentations’. Most of this money came from Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, an electronics and tape operative for the group. He had more money than the other members because during the day he worked as one of three partners at the Hipgnosis design agency. This punishing dual schedule of arcane, occult, narcotic musical research at night and design during the day was something he kept up long after TG split in 1981. The first 500 copies of the album sold – almost entirely by word of mouth, no advertising – paid off their debts, while the final 285 raised enough money to record another album. And while there genuinely are still a few squat ravaged men out there grinding down their tiny nubs of teeth at the betrayal caused by these beautiful reissues, (already pushed toward the brink of psychosis in 2011 by similar treatment of CRASS’s back catalogue no doubt) they have, as always, missed the point. If you isolate this one statement of intent, it shines out as having more significance than most of the platitudinal rubbish spouted by nearly all other bands during their entire morbidly obese careers. Most modern bands are quick to claim that they just make music for themselves. This is to kick dirt over the fact that they either don’t know why they make music or to disguise the fact that the music is simply secondary to the pursuit of money, intoxication and sex. They are of course, fucking liars. Only Throbbing Gristle had the right to the mantra: We just make music for ourselves, and if our audience hate it as well – then that’s a bonus. Their statement was intended to convey the fact that they were not indulging in a commercial enterprise; they were not making a form of popular music, like punk or disco for example. They were not a punk or disco band - even though people would confuse them for former, they had more in common with the latter but only by a few scant degrees. (It would be perhaps fairer to say they were a post punk band who formed (just) before punk happened and remained one until (just) after post punk ended. Throbbing Gristle got lumped in with punk for fairly understandable reasons but they had little in common with the Sex Pistols or The Clash. [There was never any chance at all of seeing Pan's People doing an interpretive dance to 'Very Friendly', no matter how intoxicating a prospect.

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


Perhaps only CRASS shared any common ground with them, given that they were both interested in using the apparatus of control to break down control systems, they were both philosophically driven units that had more in common with the (far more radical) late 1960s counterculture than they did with the prevailing ‘nihilist’/’anarchist’ orthodoxy in the late 1970s, and they both rejected dunder-headed masculine aggressiveness for something far more effective and vicious. (Obviously, in other ways they were nothing like each other; while they were both sworn enemies of capitalism and the bourgeois society, CRASS opposed these things as utopian anarchists. TG didn’t so much oppose as expose; and they seemed more resigned to a life trapped in dystopia not fighting for utopia.) But really, when all is said and done, they truly were sui generis, sharing only certain spiritual and functional strands with one or two other groups of the day such as Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Nurse With Wound and Public Image Limited. Chrisopherson, along with Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter, invented industrial music and have towered over the genre artistically for the three decades since – despite being dormant for most of that time. They were as important in their own right in the development of the networks and philosophies used in the rise of independently produced and distributed music as CRASS and Black Flag were in theirs. Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti Interview, Rough Trade East by theQuietus The Second Annual Report Of Throbbing Gristle is a compilation of sorts. The first side is comprised of tracks recorded at four of their first five live shows. (These “demonstrations” took place at the ICA, London; Brighton Polytechnic; Southampton University and the Rat Club, London between October 1976 and May 1977.) Only ‘Maggot Death’ and ‘Industrial Introduction’ were recorded in the studio. The second side is the soundtrack to a COUM Transmissions film After Cease To Exist. Either way, there isn’t much to separate these tracks (bar the length of the soundtrack and its use of radio broadcast musique concrete ‘samples’) as they were all recorded live with no overdubs. All of it is a cacophony of disturbing noise, howling electronics, mistreated guitars and dub echo vocals. The overall feeling is as

death to mediaocrity


if the massed adversaries of Dr Who (as played by Jon Pertwee during his exile on Earth) have invaded the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop to slaughter the occupants, perhaps with some help from Robert Fripp, Faust and

Karlheinz Stockhausen. To say it is an acquired taste is kind of like saying constant beatings will eventually “grow on you”. Nonetheless this is a great album. The CD is probably the better buy over the vinyl, simply because of the extra material and ever so slightly louder mastering but both are worth owning. (The vinyl’s relative quietness after all can be fixed by simply turning the volume knob up on one’s stereo – something that seems to have escaped the notice of many angry people on the internet recently - and the wax comes with really good booklets, containing reviews and photos from the band’s

death to mediaocrity


archive.) The second disc of the CD here is made up of seven extra live recordings made mainly in 1977, as well as ‘United’ and ‘Zyklon B Zombie’ (based loosely on VU’s ‘I Heard Her Call My Name’) taken from their first 7” single. There is almost a recognisable song structure to ‘No Two Ways’ (Hat Fair, Winchester), given that it sounds like Hawkwind undergoing painful spaghettification as they come within the pull of a black hole. But ‘United’ is perhaps their first ever ‘pop’ song and I can’t be the only one who finds TG even more unsettling when they’re being pretty. But the rest of the material here is remarkably ugly – not just in the harshness of the music, the offensiveness of the lyrical content, the disturbing nature of the packaging but even down to how it was recorded. Absolutely nothing was left to chance in the assault on the listener. POrridge described it as “one in thee eye for hi-fi freaks” - a gross understatement, given that it is sheer zero point one percenter music. Even the lo-fi recording technique on its own is enough to put most curious listeners off. The entire first album bar ‘Cease To Exist’ was taped on a Sony cassette recorder through a condenser microphone onto a home stereo cassette. The album was mastered on a portable Revox unit hired for the day. The tape they used was second hand and it was only Christopherson noticing that you could still hear an orchestra playing underneath the tracks that saved the album. But this churning sonic distress was essential to TG. The swamp of hiss and electronic crackle that frames early TG recordings is the thing that makes you forget that you are listening to machines. Sounds that should be pure and clinical become organic and occult. D.o.A. The Third And Final Report contains the clearest examples of TG’s anti-virtuoso tendencies running rampant. Again there was a powerful dichotomy at work between their use of relatively hi-specification kit and their insistence on using it in a very untutored, “child-like” way. P-Orridge played the bass because “it was the thing I was least qualified to do”, Tutti played a cut down Satellite guitar because it was the instrument she was least attracted to and Christopherson was charged with simply making noise and ambience on electronics rather than anything that would have been immediately identified as music by most. Only Carter actually liked the equipment he was using and this enthusiasm spilled over into building

death to mediaocrity


equipment, including the notorious Gristle-izer boxes. Perhaps it was this technological, melodic inclination (he was more of a fan of Tangerine Dream than John Cage) that often sees him painted as the musical one in the group.

Not that there’s much in the way of lush and pleasant melody here. For example, ‘I.B.M.’ is more musique concrete of data transfer noise overlaid with guitar feedback and electronic beeps. (Listening to it now reminds me

death to mediaocrity


of a story that my friend Derek Walmsley, the Reviews Editor of WIRE magazine, told me: once when he was working in MVC in Notting Hill someone played a VIC 20 cassette on the shop stereo, inspiring one far out IDM fan customer to enquire what it was and if he could buy it.) ‘Hit By A Rock’ is Cabaret Voltaire gone cosmic, while the version of ‘United’ is merely the tape of the single version played so quickly it loses any kind of sense. Admittedly ‘AB/7A’ is a glistening slice of electro, which weirdly wouldn’t sound out of place played in a modernist place of worship such as Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral or The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, despite clearly nodding to everyone’s favourite Swedish disco/pop group. But mainly this album is the sound of collapse and abjection. The vivid burns unit horror of ‘Hamburger Lady’ – featuring everyday sounds of a hospital ward rendered in the most chilling way possible - may well be better known, but the real creeping terror of this album lies in the gothic ‘E-Coli’, the pure noise of ‘Walls Of Sound’ and sterile, clicking white hiss coupled with the covert recording of a male prostitute contained on ‘Valley Of Shadow Of Death’. The intense lifestyle and philosophy of the group, and the fact his relationship with Tutti was collapsing, caught up with P-Orridge just before the album was recorded and he took a large overdose of mogadon before a gig. With this in mind ‘Weeping’, the child-like song co-written by the singer while recuperating on valium, is a particularly harrowing listen. The second CD contains nine live tracks recorded during 1978 (including a lively reboot of After Cease To Exist) as well as the 7” tracks ‘Five Knuckle Shuffle’ and ‘We Hate You Little Girls’, which shows if nothing else, that even during this grim year, P-Orridge didn’t entirely lose his sense of humour. In recent years retrofuturism has become a well-worn subject that bands everywhere from We Were Promised Jetpacks and The Flaming Lips to Leyland Kirby and Erasure have delved into. It is usually a key subject mentioned when the music of artists such as Boards of Canada, Broadcast and Oneohtrix Point Never and other “hauntological” groups are being discussed. The growing popularity in the use of vintage synthesizers at the moment dovetails neatly into themes of looking back to more aspirational, hopeful times. But even back then Throbbing Gristle realised that the end

death to mediaocrity


product of an industrialized society wasn’t more leisure time for humans, merely their redundancy. The moronic complaint by Musicians Union types back then that synthesizers and electronic gadgetry were putting ‘real’ musos out of work were met by TG who seemed to be saying: Yes, we know. That is the point. D.o.A. seems intent on pitting human failure (‘Weeping’, ‘Hamburger Lady’) against machine success (‘IBM’, ‘Walls Of Sound’). 20 Jazz Funk Greats is probably TG’s most famous album, even if in some respects, it’s hard to work out why. The cover art - featuring the band dressed in smart casual gear, grinning at the camera from a pretty landscape - and ironic title seem designed to upset the listener who, by now, was at least expecting a grainy black and white photograph of a Nazi concentration camp or pictures suggesting child pornography. But this perfectly cornball artwork has become an all-time classic. There was much more to ponder in this rather than the alternate shot which revealed that they were actually standing at the top of notorious coastal suicide spot Beachy Head and were gathered round a naked male corpse. Interestingly, even though most of the sleeves were designed by Christopherson, the original idea may have originated with Muriel, P-Orridge’s mother, who asked her son, “Why can’t you make a nice record for once, and use a nice picture for a change… Something nice [with] flowers… and why can’t you all smile for a change?” Throbbing Gristle’s third long player genuinely is nice in bits though. ‘Hot On The Heels Of Love’ is a straight up Italo disco number, albeit a very glacial one. It highlights Carter’s burgeoning abilities as a programmer and sees the initial experiments of subverting pop on tracks such as ‘United’ come full circle. With breathless vocals from Tutti, the track set the template for some of the pair’s excellent post-TG work together during the 80s. Another memorable Carter moment on the album is ‘Walkabout’, a glistening slice of Kraftwerkian techno, comprised of celestial arpeggios, stripped of any other recognizable industrial or disco elements, bar a bed of pulsating synth noise. (Carter’s ‘pop’ songs act like the film The Straight Story in the middle of David Lynch’s otherwise deranged career. These songs state, ‘Look, we can do pop music with the best of them – we just choose not to.’)

death to mediaocrity


Aware that the band would, in all likelihood, snare a few unsuspecting punters into purchasing the album by the title and artwork alone, they went one step further and created in the opening title track a simulacrum of jazz funk. As Drew Daniel of Matmos says: 'Chalking the sidewalk outline around the corpses of jazz and funk with heavy quotation marks, TG offer not jazz but “jazz”, not funk but “funk”.' (There is more violently debased 'jazz' in the bass and vibes of ‘Tanith’, a P-Orridge track, and some unhinged “easy listening” in Carter track ‘Exotica’ for the hell of it as well.) It is only when you hear ‘Beachy Head’, however, an atmosphere of synthesized breezes, gull calls, guitars mimicking ships horns and deep bass drones of dread, that you become aware that there is more to the cover art than meets the eye. The album has a dense binary star pairing at its centre, whose gravity holds everything in place, with ‘Persuasion’ as the primary force and ‘Convincing People’ as the companion. The latter track is about political control where the former is about personal control. ‘Persuasion’ crackles with power specifically thanks to the tension between P-Orridge’s dirge like bass and sinister, procedural revelations of how he coerces people and Tutti’s insane bursts of resistant, squealing guitar noise. The song is no less powerful for it being a testament of Tutti’s ‘victory’. In literal terms, she had successfully left the singer for Carter by this point and not been persuaded to return to him - but in less literal terms, it is a battle of sonic strategies that she clearly ‘wins’. Insidiously, the most distressing element to 'Persuasion' is like a funhouse mirror held up to the Serge Gainsbourg song ‘En Melody’. The funkiest track from his outstanding Histoire de Melody Nelson album is supposed to represent Serge having sex with his underage teenage conquest from Sunderland. In order to coax suitably erotic noises out of his lover Jane Birkin (who was playing the title role on the album), he took to tickling her causing her to laugh uncontrollably. It is only when this ‘laugh track’ is added to the sexually charged music that it takes on a different, more adult nature. Christopherson was responsible for covertly and overtly taping much of the spoken word content of TG’s albums. But in this instance it is a relatively innocent tape of a ten year old boy, whose laughs and squeals become transformed into something altogether more terrifying simply

death to mediaocrity


because of the musical context. The extra disc contains six live tracks recorded in Manchester’s The Factory venue in 1979, another taped at Northampton’s Guildhall, as well as the murky but furious 12” A side ‘Discipline – Manchester’ and the slightly less dynamic and no less clear B side ‘Discipline – Berlin’. Heathen Earth was recorded live in the Martello Street Studios of Industrial Records in front of a small invited audience including journalist Jon Savage in February 1980. TG doing a live album was, of course, not that strange, but

the album is more cohesive and marshalled than any of the others. (That said, it was completely improvised around a list of instructions that ran: “Trumpets, 666s, Free Link, Disjointed Fast Rhythm, Slow Rhythm, Cosey & Sleazy Vocals, Gen comes in, Trumpet & Tribal Rhythm, Sleazy’s Tape.”) Not all the material was entirely original though. For example ‘The Old Man Smiled’ was a solo P-Orridge piece based on ‘Six Six Sixties’ from 20 Jazz

death to mediaocrity


Funk Greats with lyrics about William Burroughs and Brion Gysin in Tangiers. Track three, ‘Improvisation’ is another version of ‘Cease To Exist’. But it was to be their last album and they started as they began, flying by the seat of their combat pants, doing everything to throw obstacles in their own path, asking associate Stan Bingo to record the event and act as sound engineer, precisely because he’d never done it before and didn’t know what he was doing. But their gamble paid off and it remains a brilliantly weird album. They went out demanding nothing other than 100% clarity of vision from their fans. As P-Orridge intones: “You should always aim to be as skilful as the most professional of the government agencies. The way you live, structure, conceive and market what you do should be as well thought out as a government coup. It’s a campaign. It has nothing to do with art.” (This reissue contains the best of the extra discs, containing a number of rare live tracks such as ‘Auschwitz’ and ‘Devil’s Gateway’ as well as the single tracks ‘Subhuman’ and ‘Adrenalin’.) Greatest Hits doesn’t add much to the picture other than the ‘Tiab Guls’ ‘version’ of ‘Slug Bait’, unreleased versions of ‘The Old Man Smiled’ and ‘AB/ 7A’ as well as the ‘Adrenalin’/’Distant Dreams (Part 2)’ single. That said it does have some jolly photos of the band in happier times and Hawaiian shirts, living it up in a Kon Tiki bar posing with a cornet and a plastic crab and laughing. But actually perhaps this photograph does add something to the story. It’s odd to see TG out of uniform but even in exotica mufti, they’re still instantly recognizable. The best outlier groups look like action figures of themselves and this is as true of Sunn O))), Public Enemy, Slayer, Mayhem, Kraftwerk, CRASS and The Velvet Underground as it is of Throbbing Gristle. This is because they are complete aesthetic units, where nothing has been left to chance. It speaks of complete immersion, total control and unshakable vision. Also, why are they laughing? They are laughing because they are in a funny band. Admittedly, the humour is sometimes oblique, sometimes thin on the ground and sometimes too black for comfort, and sometimes they’re only laughing because otherwise they’d be crying, but it is quite obviously there. Of all the silly accusations that have been levelled at TG over the

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


years, I haven’t read anything quite as daft as the suggestion that ‘We Hate You Little Girls’ is misogynist. I guess they’re not a band for literalists looking for a reason to get upset. Coming a close second for me is ‘Subhuman’, which isn’t even in their top three of ostensibly offensive songs about concentration camps. I personally don’t think that TG are, or were, Nazis or Gypsy killers or paedophiles or “wreckers of civilization”, and I don’t think most other people do either; at least they don’t when they stop and think about it. So if they’re not mocking little girls, gypsies, burn victims and suicidal coastal ramblers, where is all this scorn being directed? Could it be that it’s us? At the average buyer of so called ‘alternative’ music? That they're simply laughing at people who do nothing to resist their pre-determined roles in a post industrial, late capitalist society? An uncomfortable suggestion given that no one likes to be mocked in public. In a rare moment of warm heartedness towards the end of their career (or weakness, if you listen to P-Orridge), they took advice to record a song with a positive message - leading to ‘Don’t Do As You’re Told, Do As You Think’. (P-Orridge later recalled the genesis of the song: “To be honest I think this is the weakest vocal track and lyric [on Heathen Earth]. Someone, a journalist or Sleazy, or both, suggested we should have a “positive” message! Ugh! Certainly Sleazy persuaded me to try and this is the resultant track. I still find it embarrassing and wish I’d never listened to him. It would have been better as an instrumental. Ah well…”) On this one song, it is spelled out for you. Throbbing Gristle were one of the few groups to treat you like an intelligent adult; if you return the favour you can see them for what they were: incisive satirists, great artists, brilliant entertainers, terrible musicians making peerlessly superb music… However, if you choose not to return the favour, all you are left with is ugly, vicious noise.

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


language is a virus the william burroughs cut uP machine

http://languageisavirus.com/cutupmachine.html

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


http://www.tape.ly/cut-up-2

death to mediaocrity


How can you let ennui sink in if you're modern? To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world–and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are. — Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, p. 15. Comfort creates ennui and the death of the soul. To remain interested and interesting, one as to simply seek struggle and keep struggling. There's no mystery to this game. Death is simply comfort. _DC 2012

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


excerpt from

SNUFF” by Dean Cavanagh loads of words put together about human behavior that no cunt will ever publish...but frankly who cares?

Vlatko was named after a Bosnian king. His mother was murdered by his father for fucking a neighbor. Dad took a rusty pickaxe to her head, made mince of her brains, got roaring drunk on Slovak shine and hung himself. Vlatko was twelve at the time. He was glad to have got shut. The reason mum was fucking the neighbor was because dad wasnít fucking her. Dad was fucking Vlatko and the family goat, Tikky. In Vlatkoís mind, mum was a whore and dad was a two timing bitch. Vlatkoís dadís suicide note was addressed to Tikky. Dad preferred the goatís arse to his. Not something youíd want to include on your CV. Vlatko was scarred. He was confused. Whyíd he left the goat a note? Was Tikky the goat able to read? Was it a gifted goat? Is that why he liked to make love to it? Because it was specialÖ. Vlatko didnít have too much time to ponder the goat/love/rejection nexus. He was swiftly scooped into the State Care System. Pan into the fire. The ìProfessionalsî took over his care and well being. Vlatko made a fatal fuck-up by ëfessing heíd been fucked by his

death to mediaocrity


father. The Professionals preyed on him, the Croat Catholic Priests pimped him and the Publicly Employed Pedoís punked him. By the time Vlatko was fifteen he could have passed a bowling ball through his tattered anus horribilis. Vlatko took it in his stride though. It was ënormalí. All men craved to stick their dicks in him, but it still smarted when he thought about dad ñ push come to shove ñ getting hotter over the goat. It wasnít incestuous sodomy that fucked Vlatkoís head. It was jealousy and rejection. At sixteen he was set free from the pederasts. The only thing he knew how to do well was lie down and take it in his rectum. He was alone and skint and expected to become a useful member of society. He stole. He hustled. He failed on the streets of Belgrade. He thought about hanging himself like dad. He thought better of it. He thought heíd tough it out. He met a kindly Muslim man who ran a shelter for fallen boys. The Man gave Vlatko shelter. Gave Vlatko meals. Gave Vlatko a pristine copy of the Koran. Gave Vlatko religious instruction. Gave Vlatko a good fucking and a fisting after prayer every day. Gave it to Vlatko bareback. Gave Vlatko HIV. Gave Vlatko the post fuck tear sodden lowdown: ìAllah has struck me with this disease for being tempted by youÖyou are evil, VlatkoÖ and now you have the big disease with a little name.î Bullseye! Eureka! That was it! The goat had tempted his father! Goats were baaad muthafuckers! Evil sons of bitches! His poor father hadnít stood a chance. Rather than stay and keep tempting the poor Muslim Holy Man with his evil arsehole he hotfooted and hoofed it around Yugoslavia. He hooked with hustlers, thieves and transients. Ran with pickpockets, purse snatchers, pimps and peddlers. Vlatko asked around about his gift from the Holy Man. He got told he was in deep deep doo doo. He got told it was a disease that

death to mediaocrity


would eat him alive. He got told he should stop flogging his arse. He got told he was fucked. He got told he hadnít long left copping air. It was like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Now that Vlatko knew he was headed eternally south he lightened up. Now that there was gonna be an end in sight he reckoned he could handle anything lobbed his way. Life wasnít so scary no more knowing he wasnít long for it. He had happy times. Got off on kicking the living shit out of goats undercover of night. He left a trail of them in his wake. There was concern in the hillsides that some hip young gang were going round getting grievous on goats in some new fangled sexmajik- devil-worshipping pursuit. Vlatko managed to get to nineteen. He was surprised. He wasnít jubilant. He dug that he was on a death sentence. He didnít dig what the disease was all about. He figured heíd just keep ankling around the country seeing what happened. If men wanted to rim and fuck and fist him that was O.K. He didnít understand HIV or AIDS or The Plague or whatever else they called it, so there was no point trying to talk about it. Always the goats though. A constant: Pygmy goats, Mountain goats, Nigerian dwarf goats, Dairy goats, Cashmere goats, Boer goats, Meat goats, Kinder goats, Angora goats, Nanny goats, Fainting goatsÖ he fucked ëem all over regardless of race or specialty. Vlatko was a one man terror campaign against caprines. He lived the pleasant peasant simple life. He ate, drank, shat, pissed, stole and slept where and when he could. He trotted round the Balkans, whistling as he went. Happy Larry foraging and a-thieving. Ankling up and down the lands singing a simple song. His hobby was getting vicious on

death to mediaocrity


goats and there was a never ending supply in the backwaters. This was the good life. It was in one such village that he met Lavra. Vlatko was wandering through when he spied a Nanny goat and decided to hang ëtil darkness to give it a hiding. Lavra lived quietly with her grave dodging Grandmother in a shack. Lavra clocked the mysterious young man and instantly got his measure. He was a nomad. She would offer him a bite to eat like the good Christian girl she was. Slippery Vlatko slid off Lavraís radar. She was pissed off. It would have been nice to be Christian towards him. Being Christian made her feel good. There werenít many opportunities to feel good in her village. It would have been nice to be nice to a nomad. Night moved in. Lavra was sat out stargazing. Did most nights. The village was no Sodom or even Gomorrah, but even if it were, Lavra would have taken a rain check on the hot arse action and hedonism. The night had her skirt hitched, flashing some shiny jewels. Lavra heard a dull thudding sound from nearby and went to investigate. She spied Vlatko. He was beating ten shades of shit out of a goat that he had gagged with a paper bag and string. Lavra was mortified. Struck dumb by the sheer lunacy of the act. Vlatko was clearly getting his rocks off as he planted heavy whacks on the terrified goat with a lump hammer. Heíd tied the goat tight to a gate. The bewildered beast was snookered. Banged up a beaut behind the eight ball. Vlatkoíd obviously done this before. No dilettante goat basher, Vlatko. No Sireee, this was skilled cruelty.

death to mediaocrity


Lavra had heard the spooky tales about goats getting their beastly brains beaten out in the night, but up ëtil now she had it wrote off as rural legend. She now found herself only a few feet away from a genuine act of pure evil. Lavra felt strange. Excited and strangeÖbut not fearful. Her God was with her and something alien was stirring inside. Lavra hissed, ìStop! What are you doing?î Rumbled Vlatko dropped the hammer and was about to get on his toes when Lavra said, ìNo! Please! Please do not run away. I will not tell anybodyÖIÖI want to talk.î Vlatko was surprised. Her words had a ring of sincerity. She sounded sweet. She sounded like she meant what she said. Vlatko wiped the blood from his face on his hands and wiped his hands on his threadbare trousers. He said, ìPromise?î ìI promiseÖcomeÖI can give you food and drink.î Vlatko walked cautiously back to her shack. Granny was tucked up. Whacked out on moonshine. Lavra told him to sit whilst she got him sausage, bread and cherry wine. Vlatko was puzzled. Was she a goat hater too? Had the goat done something to offend her? Vlatko wolfed down the sausage and bread and guzzled the cherry wine. Lavra eyed him. Proud. Happy to have a nomad sat at her table. Lavra looked older than her twenty three years. She had ëvillage characteristicsí. An air of the inbred about her. Not unlike Vlatko. Neither of them lookers: big ears, bug eyes, protruding teeth and dominant foreheads. Foreheads seemingly intent on breaking out of the confines of the pockmarked skin. Vlatko reminded her of the many brothers who had fled the village in search of employment. Sheíd been left behind to look after Grandmother. Lavraís parents had been killed in a road accident many years back. Their cart was hit head-on by a truck. Blood and shit and vegetables and brains

death to mediaocrity


everywhere. The Driver of the truck had been hitting the bottle heavy. He got off with a ban and a couple of months in hokey. Heíd only killed peasants. God gave Lavra a hand dealing with the trauma. Lavra rolled up her sleeves and took on the matriarch role. Like a duck to water. Prayer and hard work kept her focused. She doted on her brothers, many of them older than her, and gave them the spur to go seeking livelihoods in the cities below. She told them itís what Momma and Poppa would have wanted. She was happy to stay behind and labor. After supper, Lavra jawed on Vlatko. Vlatko was a lad of few words. She wanted to know why he dug getting medieval on goats. Vlatko kept quiet. Nodded negative and shucked and shimmied in his seat. Lavra persisted. Laid it down: if he fessed up he could kip in the shed out back and sheíd rustle him up breakfast in the a.m. Vlatko was still not playing ball. Lavra got out her holy books. She said, ìIs it because you believe goats are evil?î Vlatko shrugged and rolled a tab. As he sucked down on the coarse baccy, Lavra got all academic with the books. She gave it, ìThere is lots about goats in the good book.î Lavra got busy picking out ëgood bookí goat related gossíp. ìLeviticus 17:7Öso they should no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-shaped demons with which they are having immoral intercourse. This will serve as a statute to time indefinite for you, throughout your generations...Isaiah 13:21, and there the haunters of waterless regions will certainly lie down, and their houses must be filled with eagle owls. And there the ostriches must reside, and the goat-shaped demons themselves will go skipping about there. And the jackals must howl in her dwelling towers, and the big snake will be in the palaces of exquisite delight. And the season for her is near to come, and her days themselves will not be postponed. God has broken the rod of the wicked ones, the staff of the ruling ones, the one striking peoples in fury with a

death to mediaocrity


stroke incessantly, the one subduing nations in sheer anger with a persecution without restraint.î Lavra checked Vlatkoís reaction. Dumb. Unimpressed. Vlatko waited for a question. Lavra said, ìWell?î ìHuhÖwhat?î Lavra said, ìIs this why you beat the goat? Do you think the goat is evil?î Vlatko cottoned and played along, ìYes. The goats are evil. All of them.î Lavra smiled, ìYou are a followerÖa follower like me, yes?î Vlatko nodded posí, sensing this was the right thing to do. Lavra smiled, reached across and patted his hand. Vlatko forced a broken goofy toothed smile back at her. Lavra got rapping holy shit. Shit Vlatko had heard before. Shit heíd heard whilst getting his colon tickled by the cocks of his so called carers. All her yabber was making him sleepy. He yawned. Lavra put her good books down and showed him to the shed. The shed was a shit hole even by local standards. A no star crib. Vlatko had crashed in worse roach motels though. He was happy to get his head down. With morning came the promised breakfast. Vlatko chowed down and Lavra asked him of his plans. He had none. Lavra said, ìYou can stay a while if you like. There is no hurry, no?î Vlatko shrugged, ìO.K.î Lavra asked after his history. He told her about the institutions. He fell shy on feeding her the forensic on the fucking that went down. Lavra gave up the facts on her family. Vlatko didnít react. Sat stone faced, wondering what the next meal was going to be about. So your folks died! Big fucking deal! You got anymore of those sausages or what?

death to mediaocrity


They went for a walk around the one pony village. Lavra let on that she loved the village but she didnít want to spend the rest of her life there. Said she wanted to go to the cities. Wanted to see big churches. Wanted to help the fallen of the cities. Wanted to help the lost souls get back on track. Lavra wanted to get busy helping the damned to become hip and groovy with their Creator. She bored Vlatko shitless but he nodded along. All he wanted was food, drink, shelter and a session of nocturnal goat aggro. Lavra offered him another nightís board and lodging. He jumped at it. If it meant earache it meant earache. He was twelve miles from the next village and his dogs were barking. Besides, those sausages were scrumptious and the cherry wine went down a treat. The holy angle wasnít too bad. At least she wasnít sticking something up his arse as she sermonized. Vlatko was woken half way through the night. At first he thought it was a ghost. Heíd never seen a ghost so he wasnít certain. Lavra, sporting a sheer grubby white knee length nighty, stood over him. She was sobbing small and holding the holy book to her chest. Vlatko rubbed at his eyes, ìWhat is wrong?î Lavra said, ìI have to ask something.î ìWhat?î Lavra stuttered, ìIÖwill youÖIÖI have never beenÖI have never been loved.î It wasnít a bombshell to Vlatko. Lavra was hardly hillbilly pin-up material, in fact, she was plain fucking ugly even by outback - heavy on the incest hill folk standards. Vlatko, ever the romantic, shrugged cold, ìSo?î ìSo I am asking youÖI am wanting you toÖto make love with me, Vlatko.î Vlatko groaned, ìOh.î ìI know it isÖit is wrong, I know thisÖbutÖmy Father is forgiving. I believe he has sent you to me, Vlatko.î

death to mediaocrity


Vlatko wasnít gobsmacked. All his life had been a never ending circle of God and getting fucked and goats and getting blamed andÖOh, what the Hell! As long as she was going to do all the work he couldnít care less. Lavra would be his first cunt, but he could handle it. Holes are holes are holes. Heíd had Johns called Jovanovic sit down on his cock before today. He figured cunt would probably hurt him less. Vlatko laid down the ground rules. He would work himself up, lie back and think of Yugoslavia whilst she did the deed to his fundamentally disinterested dick. Lavra wasnít gonna argue. Having worked herself up with her chubby digits - imagining Christ sticking it to her - her gash was gaping and primed for filler. The body of Christ, The Blood of Christ, The Cock of Christ, The Cum of Christ! Pass the collection tray please. Lavra slowly mounted him. Eyes screwed tight. Tight shut. Tight shut to the point of pain. It was Christ she was about to ride, not some rough trade, bug eyed, buck toothed, big eared goat basher. One glimpse of lovely Vlatko and sheíd have dried up double quick. Her juices would have evaporated faster than a tear on an L.A. side street at the height of a summer riot. It took an age for Lavra to insert Vlatkoís stunt cock. Finally in and it was only a couple of ups and down before she tossed her cookies. The orgasm ripped through her. She cried harder. Her sobs were deep. Wrought from the recesses of her lungs. Her eyes were still tight. Sheíd just fucked Christ for Godsake! Vlatko came by imagining himself let loose in a field full of goats with a half dozen pool balls wrapped in a sock. He shot shivers of cum up her constricting cunt. For all her religious role playing, Lavra wasnít expecting The Second Coming. She gasped as she felt her lips getting splashed with hot ejací. Eyes still nailed shut, Lavra climbed off and skidooíed out the shed. Vlatko wiped his cock on the sheet, yawned and got his head down. Lavraís

death to mediaocrity


anguished sobs didnít keep him from knocking out the Zeds. He figured Lavra was a weirdo and come the morn sheíd be just a blip on an otherwise 100 percent batting average of mano to mano action. Lavra got all emotional over breaky. She held Vlatkoís hand. His free hand shoveled eggs and meatballs into his gob. Lavra said she thought that she loved him and that they should get married. Vlatko simply kept scoffing. Lavra laid it down, ìWill you stay with me, Vlatko?î Vlatkoís stomach was full. He was smoking a roll up and sipping hot coffee. Why the Hell not! Nothing better to do. As long as she keeps the food and drink coming. Lavra said he could sleep in her bed from now. Vlatko looked over at ga ga Grandma. Lavra said not to worry. Granny was cool. Cool cos she was confused. Vlatko nodded, O.K. He spent most of his days lolling around watching Lavra do the domestics. He got hammered on cherry wine every night and smoked his roll ups. Once Grandma was snoozing theyíd climb into bed. Vlatko would rustle up a stiffy thinking about goat slaughter and Lavra would mount him. Every night the same. Lavra screwing her eyes shut, hopping on board and slowly bringing herself off. Vlatko didnít mind being a surrogate cock for Jesus. Lavra would cry herself to sleep. Vlatko would bury his head in the pillow and ignore her. Lavraís spiritual sobbing would be punctuated by Vlatkoís appreciative farting. A month and a week passed and Lavra told Vlatko that a baby would be coming. Vlatko simply said, ìOh.î Lavra said that they should get married quickly. The ceremony was cut price even by village standards. Five guests and the Orthodox Priest. The reception was in the shack. Lavra had made patties and punch. The turnout was low. The few that turned up stood around and ate the patties and drank the punch. There was very little conversation. It lasted only an hour. Vlatko was happy when it did. Talk

death to mediaocrity


soon turned to their predicament. Lavra did most of the yapping. She didnít want their child brought up in the village. She figured Sarajevo. She wanted it to have a good education. She wanted it to have a good start in life. She had a little put away. Not much, but it would get them away from the village. There was the question of Granny. She was too old and frail and mixed up to go traipsing to Sarajevo. The upheaval would be the end of her, and besides, it would be hard work and a drain on their very modest money pot. Vlatko said, ìLeave her here.î Lavra said, ìThat would be cruel, Vlatko! She can not look after herself.î Lavra gave it much thought. She asked around the village, asked if anybody would be willing to care for Granny. She got laughed at. Vlatko liked the idea of setting up in Sarajevo. He had breezed through a couple of times and he liked the hustle and bustle. Getting an apartment there appealed to him. He liked the idea of giving it a go. If he didnít take to it he could always get on his toes again and go happy wandering. He could take or leave Lavra. She fed and watered him and was kind and friendly with him. He figured heíd stick with her a little longer. Opportunity wasnít exactly knocking his holey socks off. Lavra said one night, ìYou know, VlatkoÖI have been thinkingÖlook at her.î Vlatko looked at zonked out Granny. Lavra continued, ìShe is barely alive. She doesnít know what year it isÖwe canít take her with us and we canít leave her hereÖthe decent ñ the Christian thing- would be toÖto send her to God.î Lavra was hoping Vlatko would cotton on. He didnít. He simply gave a trademark shrug and continued rolling a fag.

death to mediaocrity


Lavra had to spell it out to him. Vlatko got a boner. Relished the idea of doing the Old Dear in. It would be an honor. He wasnít keen on her. She talked stupid and she pissed in her bed and she was always staring at him like he was a strangerÖand of course, sheíd be his first human victim. He knew how good it felt to snuff goats, just imagine how good it would feel to snuff a human. Lavra came up with the method. Simple suffocation. Nothing violent. Vlatko was pissed off. He wanted to stove Grannyís head in with a hammer. They argued. Lavra put the kibosh on anything over than suffocation. She would tell him that when the time was right he would firmly place a pillow over the Old Ladyís face and send her off to Saint Peter. Vlatko was amped up on the imminent hit. He couldnít wait to savor the kill. A shot of dream fuel: night after night he went through somnambulant scenarios of snuffing the Granny-In-Law. He woke every morning with a raging hard on. Lavra hopped onboard ñ screwed her eyes shut - and imagined that Christ had arisen.

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


ANTON NEWCOMBE: HIS BLOODY UNDERGROUND WORDS: DEAN CAVANAGH

death to mediaocrity


What I want to do is enter the popular lexicon. Like Jimi Hendrix. That's my goal. Not to sell soap. Not to say, 'Look like me, dress like me, sound like me.' Not to get a supermodel girlfriend. None of that shit. I want people to come away from what I'm doing and look at it as a gift. Anton Newcombe I haven’t wrote about music since the last century. 1997 was the year I stopped writing for the NME, Melody Maker and i-d and started concentrating on screenplays with my partner in crime Irvine Welsh. I couldn’t imagine putting digits to keyboards to rhapsodize about music ever again. Contemporary music was boring me to distraction and I threw myself back into the Northern Soul, Garage Rock, Reggae, Punk and Psychedelia of a bygone age. And then...well then I found The Brianjonestown Massacre and the mercury started to rise again. Scrub that! It shattered the fucking thermometer! Anton Newcombe is The Brianjonestown Massacre and The Brianjonestown Massacre is Anton Newcombe. Fundamentally a cosmic one man band; many orbit the dogstar Newcombe, few land and stay. The Brianjonestown Massacre is an energy that defies definition and exists in a kind of Schroedinger’s Cat universe: dead and alive at the same time and tuning in to the medium of rock & roll to communicate.

You know why Guns n' Roses aren't a good band? Because no black people listen to them. - Anton Newcombe

Anton Newcombe is a dying breed. He is quite simply a genius. The fact that he isn’t recognized as one by the masses is indicative of a mediaocrity that

death to mediaocrity


celebrates the passive, the half hearted and the artificial. You want truth, brutality, beauty and passion? You get it in spades in Anton’s music. In Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request, Thank God For Mental Illness, Strung Out In Heaven or the most recent My Bloody Underground, Newcombe has proved the ability to disseminate the magical elements of rock & roll, mix them with his artistry and produce idiosyncratic masterpieces that sound like nothing else out there. A funk of despair here, a roll of euphoria there, highs, lows, mainlines and flatlines, Newcombe’s albums take you on journeys that only truly reach their destination once they’ve been tattooed onto your grey matter. Everything makes sense once you’ve let them become part of your psyche. If this sounds “dramatic”, it’s meant to. Interviewer: Is it important for you to be understood?

Anton: That would depend on the context of your question. If I was speaking to a doctor, for instance, and describing a medical condition, I would surely want to be understood. On the other hand, if I was creating a secret code, depending on the situation, then I would hope that certain people would not understand anything. Newcombe lays out the corpse of Robert Johnson, gets busy with the scalpel and searches for the place where Johnson’s soul once resided before he sold it to Beelzebub at The Crossroads. Anton’s the avatar of 21st Century Schizoid rock & roll. He’s forever sculpting the metal and making new shapes and sizes out an archetypal template forged by the Delta Bluesmen. The Brianjonestown Massacre music is art wrought from the collective consciousness and it speaks directly to your heart and mind.

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


Anton Newcombe the man is notoriously outspoken, individualistic, pioneering and driven. A legend has built up around him that could be built on truths, half truths or downright lies for all I care. It’s not important. What’s important is the picture I build in my head of the man when I listen to his music. What’s important is the connection. What’s important is that my rock & rollers deliver. I like my rock & rollers to be shrouded in mystery, disinformation and dichotomy. I want them to be unpredictable, savage and fascinating. I don’t want them to try and save the world, feed the hungry or pontificate on the political climate because I want them to be honest with me. I want my rock & rollers to make music that can’t be made by anybody else but them -- music that makes you feel a little less alienated -- music that ultimately lays bare the soul of its creator...in Anton Newcombe we have a creator of music who puts truth before anything else. Do yourself a favour and (re)discover his work.

death to mediaocrity


FRATER

ACHAD death to mediaocrity


ON FREEDOM... 1923 Listen Brother! Are you. FREE? Are you enjoying the full, free life of the true master-class, or are you groveling in slavery, in sin? "Sir," you reply, "What is sin to me? I have outgrown such ideas as Sin, and Hell and the Devil. Nowadays, no educated person believes in the existence of these things. But, as to Freedom? How can I be free when I am working 10 hours a day, so that the Capitalist who is pocketing 3/4 of the results of my labour, may live in luxury and idleness on the money I earn for him. How can I be free under such a system?" Listen Brother! You may be free NOW, if you WILL. Work does not bind you. Work is no sin, but RESTRICTION is. "The word of Sin is Restriction." You are sinning as long as you feel restricted, for "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!" The Master has told us so. The Book of the Law tells us so, for the New Law is a Law of Liberty and Freedom for all. It is not the Capitalist who is preventing you from enjoying to the full your leisure hours. It is not your daily work which prevents you from taking advantage to the full the pleasures of your spare time. It is yourself, because you have either forgotten how to enjoy yourself or you have never learned, or been taught, or tried to teach yourself.

death to mediaocrity


It is this lack of true enjoyment that fills your life with misery and despair. It is this lack of true pleasure that makes your work (which is healthy and manly and good) seem dull and monotonous and uninteresting. It is this lack of the realization of the joy of life that makes you envy the Capitalist (of whose troubles and worries you know nothing) who is in reality as much a slave as you are. It is this, I say, that makes you think the whole System is wrong. And so it is, but not in the way you think and suppose. Have you not been taught from childhood that every true and manly enjoyment is a Sin and a disgrace that should not be indulged in? Have you not been taught that if you. do enjoy yourself, and anybody finds out, you will be shunned as a sinner and a bad man! Have you not found that either you must go against the true promptings of your nature in almost every conceivable way, or perform your true desires in a secret and disgraceful way, for fear of being found out and losing your socalled `reputation?' Do you realize that this terrible state of affairs has become a part of your very consciousness, is a limitation and check on your every action? Even supposing you to be one who has tried to find enjoyment, in spite of wrong impressions and under existing conditions; did you not find that at first the Feeling of Freedom, even in doing what you thought to be wrong, was a great part of the enjoyment itself? But once that stage is past, once let that idea go and get to feeling, "Oh well, I've done it before and now I can't help it" and you gradually get more and more dulled and the pleasure grows less and less, until what was once true enjoyment and real freedom at the start, loses "even the pleasant consciousness of sin" and becomes another form of slavery. You have lost the very sense of Freedom. You are a slave. But the worst slave of all is the prig who indulges (openly) in no pleasures at all, in order that he may be considered `virtuous' or `respectable' or a `Christian' who has `got religion' and wants to see every one else in the same deplorable state of senile decay, so

death to mediaocrity


that he may not feel quite so much out of place in the world. Such is not Freedom, my Brother. Freedom is Fullness of Life, Manliness of Action, Virility in Love, Fearlessness of Conduct combined with the utmost toleration of the rights of others, and a true recognition of their liberty to do their Will. What, think you, is the reason why the Latin and the Chinese and the Hindu (of whom many of you are jealous because you think. they have no right here and would take away work that you should have) are willing to work for a mere pittance? It may well be that you have good cause. to envy them, if you did but know it, for they are Contented and Happy because their SPARE TIME, their LEISURE (however short) is FULL OF DELIGHT. They are wont to indulge their true feelings in every way, including the. proper way, for it must be admitted that many of the Oriental Races are masters in the art of producing pleasure WITHOUT EXPENSE. They know, from experience, as you have never known, as yet, that an Hour of Rapture is recompense for a Day of hard work. I do not say that "A moment of Rapture is compensation for a lifetime of misery." That is absurd, the idle talk of the poet. But AN HOUR OF RAPTURE and a DAY OF TOIL, is practical and possible and WORTH WHILE. And you. don't get it under existing circumstances. How much time are you really devoting to any true enjoyment, say for instance Love? Most of you know nothing of Love after the first year of married life. Even then the total rapture is probably but a few seconds per week, and then it is not True Rapture. Love, like every other true enjoyment is a Science, an Art. How much of your time do you spend in its study? Don't you see, brother, how you are being fooled with regard to these. things, all the time. How those who want to keep you in slavery are cunningly (or ignorantly, it matters little) working in

death to mediaocrity


every possible way to take from you one true pleasure after another, to prohibit you from all those things Nature has provided for your enjoyment and highest good? Don't you see how the more. their grasp on you. slackens, the more they will try and take, so that they may better retain their hold, while you are less and less in a position to Free yourself, and more and more stupefied into submission because there is so little of the true man left in you to fight? Their very system is based on slavery (your slavery) as representing the highest perfection, though the Truth they once held- but never declared and therefore lost- was intended to lead you to Perfect Freedom. But Truth, my brother, must once again be given to the world, though in a different language from of yore, because the very System that has held you in bondage so long, has used the Symbolism which in the days of The Christ radiated Truth and it has become so befouled with external and useless meanings that there is hardly a sentence of what once was Living Truth, that can now be' used by any True Man, without a feeling of shame, because the words have become so distorted and their meaning falsified for other and less worthy ends. Therefore, brother, we use a new language, a new Symbolism for the veil of Truth as you will find if you study our Books and Writings, just as in years to come, if its purity again be lost, another and another System will arise, for the Truth is ever one, in whatever language its outer form may be clothed. But in this tract I will not deal with the higher problems, I want to talk to you quite simply, as men and women, in your own language, so that you may understand and Rejoice. "There. is no law beyond DO WHAT THOU WILT." All that you have learned to look upon as `good' which binds you and prevents you from doing your true Will and from enjoying the true Manhood and Womanhood that is yours by right - is SIN. There is no other sin. "The word of sin is restriction."

death to mediaocrity


But when you enjoy yourselves and take delight in those pleasures of which the Life of man is made up, you must remember that every act of Pleasure and of Love is a Sacrament and as such is holy. That is just where you have been making the mistake in the past. You have looked upon these things as wrong, and therefore restricted yourselves and your actions making them sins instead of realizing their true value and perfect holiness. Again, if you drink wine, and so long as you enjoy it -and you will enjoy it when you understand how to use itit is not wrong, but you should drink unto the honour and glory of Our Lady of the Starry Heavens, Nuit, Who has Herself given us these teachings, and who tells us in our Holy Book, the Book of the Law, Liber Legis: "Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me." If you ever bear this one point in mind, and remember that these acts are holy and sacred, not sins, but true virtues, life will at once wear a different aspect. You will no longer feel sorrowful or sad, and while you look upon the wine you drink as a Sacrament, you will never debase yourself by getting `drunk' in the old sense of the word, but you will ENJOY your drink as never before. Thus with Love, and all else in which you indulge and take delight. For "It is a lie, this folly against self - Be strong man! Lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this." Be strong then, Brother, and be not afraid. Work, work hard and well, since your living depends on this, but after your toil is over, in your leisure hours, remember what we have told you, Seek Rapture, if only for an hour, and learn that Love is the law, love under will.

death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


death to mediaocrity


going further down the sync hole...

death to mediaocrity


every muthafuckin� issue

death to mediaocrity


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.