In the early 1980s, nightlife was limited, with clubs closing by 2 am. Amid overpriced discos, a subculture emerged, embracing electronic music and underground clubs. Influenced by bands like Soft Cell, the writer explored the growing club scene in London, including venues like the Batcave, the Hacienda, and illegal warehouse parties. This scene laid the foundation for Acid House’s rise in the late ’80s.
Read More
This article explores the historical struggles against capitalist control in Italy, focusing on the Autonomia movement’s tactics like self-reduction, political shopping, and illegal occupations. It highlights the state’s repression and manipulation of these social movements and the lingering questions about effective resistance.
Read More
The text offers a vivid commentary on the transformation of landscapes and their symbolic connections to human aspirations and social struggles. It juxtaposes orderly agricultural fields, symbolizing efficiency and ownership, with untamed forests and lawless frontier towns, representing unpredictability and societal conflicts. Through the lens of Anthony Mann’s westerns, it explores themes of law, identity, community, and the struggle for power, questioning the balance between imposed order and innate chaos.
Read More
Re-incarnated in print form and collecting essays and texts by Howard Slater from 97-99, ( only a couple of which had been previously published in Autotoxicity), this edition is almost a book. Despite the disparate subject matter a kind of narrative unfolds tracing the “foretaste of freedom in those unexpunged communications that music and literature make tangible”
Read More
Minimal Apertures is an addendum to the article The Western by Howard Slater with short remarks about The Wild Bunch, Once Upon A Time in the West, Winchester 73, McAbe and Mrs Miller, Ulzana’s Raid and El Topo.
Read More
Interview with the French hardcore music collective No-Tek from 1998 about their eclectic post-punk approach towards fast and hard electronic music, their DIY ethic and the “unconscious idealism” of bringing breakbeats into the hardcore sound.
Read More
Review article on releases from the Mille Plateaux label from 1998. With music we can change the world; subtle changes of perception, shifting an outlook that can no longer be solidified, coherent or self-orienting. We turn instead to an outside: a large window… several horizons… adjectives and vision absconding through red solarised trees.
Read More
Peter Edwards: the endless short story – a six year loop [emailorder tape] concept and review by Eddie Miller aka Flint Michigan.
Read More
A 20 minute long studio dabble from New Order recorded as a test for Blue Monday but shifted to the role of Hacienda video soundtrack finds here its first vinyl release. An intriguing track that marked the onset of a recombinant disco music shot through with a waning punk ethos.
Read More