Current 909:
Something with Black in the Name
[aufnahme + wiedergabe – [a+w XXIII]]
Current 909 is the project of Pure, who should be known by his releases on Praxis, his Loop recordings, or by being one half of Ilsa Gold.
Current 909 already had two outings in the ‘90s on Atmosfear recordings. These blended relentless Techno tactics with bleakest and darkest of atmospheres. And this is where this record continues. We have 4/4 and twisted rhythms and Techno percussions, and something like a perverted Lovecraftian Dark Ambient melange. And this combination works very well. Only 4 tracks, but the food of nightmares.
In a statement, Pure said he is interested in a certain thing, to connect the Techno ecstatics of the ‘90s with the sombre motions of ‘80s Industrial/left-field outings. A very fitting statement for this record, and I think he did succeed.

Patric Catani:
For Pit People (OST)
[Storage Records]
Patric Catani was the leading head case Gabba-Noize berserker in the ‘90s with his output as E-De Cologne, Eradicator and Test Tube Kid. His musical journey took him to other shores eventually too.
The latest permutation of this is the release here: a soundtrack for a video game called “Pit People”. This brings back memories of his mock game full-length album, The Horrible Plans Of Flex Busterman, and includes some of the best tricks and elements of that album.
But to me we find influences of all his anti-career here; the oddness of the Puppetmastaz, the Candie Hank insanity, withered traces of Breakcore rhythms, and maybe, maybe, some remote inspiration of Gabba.
But to give the lowdown, the dominating style is definitely video game music, with catchy melodies, ironic cheesiness, upbeat drumming, bleeps and clonks, and, without a doubt, a big smile during production.
If you like Catani’s music, give it a try. If you liked Flex Busterman – get this immediately!

Umwelt:
Abandon In Place
[New Flesh – NF20] [Read more →]

Dale Street:

Lions Led by Jackals – Stalinism in the International Brigades

Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, January 2016, no ISBN]

This 40-page A4 pamphlet published by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty traces the history of the International Brigades by way of sifting through the trove of documents from the Communist International’s archives of the International Brigades, which have recently been made available online. These offer interesting insights into the structure of the Brigades as well as the histories and motivations of those who joined them.

The International Brigades (IB) were troops set up by the Communist International who fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) on the side of the Republican forces against the fascist military coup led by General Franco and supported by Italy and Germany. The primary motivation of many members was to “fight fascism”, which showed a high level of individual and collective courage. Many certainly thought that they were, while fighting against fascism, also fighting for communism. They were about to be disappointed. As Street writes, “The goal of the Popular Front [Republican] government, which included representatives of the Spanish Communist Party, was not working-class revolution, but defense of bourgeois power and property relations” […] “Confronted with the greatest working-class insurrection in Europe since the October Revolution, Stalinism sought to demobilise and confine that insurrection to the limits of a “bourgeois-democratic revolution’”. The International Brigades were disbanded by the Republican government in 1938.

Incontro con Christoph Fringeli della redazione di DATACIDE, rivista che esplora le implicazioni sociali del souno del dancefloor e il binomio noise & politics. L’incontro sarà moderato da Riccardo Balli. A seguire dalle ore 21 ad appena un numero civico di distanza presso Stomp Bologna SOUND APERITIF con dj Lynx + C.F. (Praxis Records)
datacide-magazine.com

praxis-records.net
Rivista seminale in lingua inglese che sin dagli annI ’90 in formato fanzine e sotto il nome ALIEN UNDERGROUND monitora le implicazioni sociali del suono mutante del dancefloor. Il termine noise usato nell’accezione del magazine individua specificatamente la cassa di risonanza che si crea tra il continuum di sonorità elettroniche orientate al ballo & la politica intesa in senso allargato come scienza che regola ogni forma di interazione sociale. Ma perchè erigire la musica dance a campo di osservazione favorita dell’antropologia del contemporaneo? Venitelo a scoprire di persona giovedì prima al Libreria modo infoshop e poi al bar Stomp Bologna .

Music by Lynx, Psychic Defence, Christoph Fringeli

The Reddit Controversy

Riccardo Balli, however obscure and enigmatic he might appear in his writing and featured on his picture discs, has shown that he can be highly lucid and brilliantly persuasive in expounding his ideas when he is provoked to defend himself by attacks, such as the one Toby Reynolds, the literary critic of Datacide, launched against him on Reddit in the summer of 2018.

In reviewing ‘Frankenstein, Or The 8-Bit Prometheus’, Reynolds warned his readers of the danger that Balli might become the messiah of the enemies of realism. “Here at last was a self-proclaimed advocate of anti-writing: explicitly anti-realist and by implication anti-reality as well. Here was a writer ready to declare that words were meaningless and that all communication between human beings was impossible. Reynolds conceded that Balli presented a valid personal vision, but “the peril arises when it is held up for general emulation as the gateway to writing or music of the future, that bleak new world from which the humanist heresies of faith in logic and belief in man will forever be banished.’ Balli was moving away from realism, with “characters and events [that] have traceable roots in life” – from the writing of Paul Virilio, Stewart Home, Bill Drummond, Mark Manning, Lester Bangs, Brecht and Sartre.1
Reynolds’ attack opened one of the most interesting discussions on this subject ever conducted in public. Balli replied that he certainly did not see himself as a messiah,

1.

Så länge som det funnits en tanke på universell befrielse genom kommunistisk revolution, har detta projekt rymt en spänning mellan två tillvägagångssätt – två motsatta positioner, bland människor som, ytligt betraktat, strävar efter samma slutmål.

Å ena sidan finner vi ett synsätt som kan sammanfattas med dessa ord: Endast revolutionen kommer att öppna för ett verkligt lustfyllt liv, och för att nå dit måste vi agera som asketiska kadrer.

Den motsatta sidan menar: Bara genom att utveckla våra lust och följa våra begär kommer revolutionen att öppna sig som en möjlighet.

Om vi blickar tillbaka på det gångna seklets två stora faser av revolutionära kamper (den första kring 1917–23, den andra kring 1967–77, med geografiska variationer), så finner vi genast att det för många revolutionärer varit grundläggande och självklart att hedonism och revolution måste gå hand i hand.

Frågan är nära kopplad till synen på arbete. “Frihetens rike börjar i själva verket först där det arbete som är bestämt av nödtvång och yttre ändamålsenlighet upphör”, skriver Marx i det tredje bandet av Kapitalet. Han lämnar inga tvivel om att frihetens rike alltid måste bygga på nödvändighetens rike, men heller inte om att människans mål måste vara att uppnå största möjliga frihet. Och detta måste inbegripa lönearbetets avskaffande.