Tuesday, August 21, 2007  3:10 pm 

The past is the future

1- Phil Dick once wrote a short story called ‘The Trouble with Bubbles’. It is about a future where Humankind finds itself, in the absence of other habitable planets in the Solar system, trapped in Earth. People’s thirst for space exploration and discovery is temporarily quenched by an industry dedicated to the construction of small bubbles containing sub-atomic living worlds which are cultivated and grown by their owners as a form of entertainment…However, the energy devoted to the creation of these replicas or ’surrogate worlds’ eventually turns into rage, and crowds begin to get together to celebrate massive orgies where they smash the bubbles they have spent so long building in wild holocausts of microscopic life.

The art of building these bubbles is called ‘Worldcraft’, heh. Rings a bell?

2- Grant Morrison appears to imply at several points of the Invisibles (I don’t dare asserting I have a clue about what they’re about yet) that all possible universes, futures and pasts, heaven and hell lie hidden inside each and every one of us.

3- Although admittedly one way of opening the door to these vistas is by resorting to psychedelic keys, it is also the case that boredom and ennui drive many to neuronal apocalypses I guess not that different to those Dick described, surely also witnessed, perhaps later in his life (’The Trouble with Bubbles’ was written in 1953).

4- Music is another way of accessing and creating new worlds outside and beyond this terrenal sphere, in Robert Heinlein’s terms, of deploying vectors of movement outside of the three physical dimensions, and also of the fourth one (ahead in time, one second at a time), perhaps travelling full reverse into a mythical past where people hadn’t given up on the future (or space) yet, perhaps because they didn’t live in it like, in a certain way, we seem to do.

5- William Gibson has for example decided to abandon writing about the future because he thinks himself unable to predict it anymore, the accelerated curve of technological change is, according to him, becoming too steep for that, perhaps because we’re headed towards the Singularity, I don’t know about this but the feeling of loathing that those human mutants living in the TV screen inspire on me suggest that humankind is indeed changing, maybe I’m becoming obsolete.

6- Although it is rather contestable whether science fiction should be about technological prediction (rather than philosophical speculation, hence my adoration for Dick and Lem), it would seem that Gibson has a point he isn’t even trying to make, or wouldn’t revisiting most of the styles explored during this genre’s honourable history constitute an exercise in revival, this is, travelling to the past? Even masters like Frank Herbert or Vernor Vinge are simply stretching the space opera into colossal dimensions of space and time, their novels read in a historical style analogous to Tolkien’s. Although, of course, they rule much more.

7- Perhaps to talk about the future truly we need to use the technological tools of our age, Anime seems to have done a good job so far, video games some day? Nuff respect to these genres’ creative daredevils, however I like books too much, before going back to my sofa with one I’m going to leave you with a couple of tunes which seem to follow a similar M.O. to which we have sketched, or don’t they, in order to evocate worlds of the future which span beyond postmodern post-cyberpunk pastiches, do like Batman before leaping between two dark skyscrapers in Gotham city? You know, take a few steps back and inhale deeply?

7 is a good number, 7 is enough. Beam us back Scotty.

A Mountain of One hail from London but for all we know they could well have arrived from a valley which lies hidden in the vast expanses of Mexico where Aeons ago the aliens descended to create a stone city of a Kadathian nature. There they mingled with the natives, perhaps introduced them to peyote, this reprise of Innocent Line included in their second EP sails with smooth A.O.R. power over a vanilla superhighway, or maybe it flies, carried by the strong wings of naughty tickly gaunt angels, choose your trip, but don’t dare denying its beauty.

A Mountain of One- Innocent Reprise Intro

Gosub already trapped us, with Watchers from the Black Universe (out in our fave label Citinite), in a eerily paranoid beat reticle surmounted by blue jack o’lanterns of pure electroid power, this force kills birdies, attention, this force kills birdies. Only Harryhausen Owls, Ea Poe Crowess and Bad-ass cannibal vultures can survive its strength and sit perched threatening in its crackling surfaces.

Well, he’s back now with a similarly futuristic apocalypse which goes by the name of Night Ma’lach, it seems clear that Belzebuth and his cohorts still smile with silvery fangs from the eternal darkness of his beat sorcerer robe, as this nasty piece of anti-romantic balladry, which could have well been croaked by Proteus as he tried to get Julie Christie to dump her hubbie and breed with him clearly shows.

‘Forcequit your love, for me’? pickup line of the year!

If she wasn’t convinced, the woozy synth line which begins at 3.10 (and sounds like a swarm of bees summoned by the Lawnmower Man to peck the Botox off Pierce Brosnan’s face), should be sufficient to send her into some nuclear fission style explosion of analogic ecstasy, I promise it’s totally worked with us, who’s going to clean this mess now?

Gosub- Forcequit your love

And then to the disco, in Space Warrior Smith and Hack do scratchy acid lines//play amphetamine pacman over a neon loop which pounds us into oblivion with a metronomic precision which could have perfectly been engineered by Bernard Fevre, this is one of the most savage pieces of new wave italo disco I have been grinded by, bleep S.O.S. signals from the Nostromo travel through the darkness of space destination nowhere while the throbbing intensity of its Moroderian circular vivisection chainsaw bass approaches merciless to unzip your intestine-pouch, SLOSH!

You were full of Love. Now you are a carcass.

Smith and Hack- Space Warrior

This side could have been signed by Motor if they were italian, less into bondage but not any less filthy, and is going to make a few wannabe Travoltas in wraparound shades lose their shit down in the dancefloor, which is A Good Thing (TM), enjoy the bloodshed kids.

This is the kind of thing that 20Jazzfunkgreats will be playing this Friday in BERLIN at…

AFTERMATH DISCO

Hosted by the most winningnest gentleman HUGO CAPABLANCA At

K.I.M. this FRIDAY
Brunnenstr 10
Rosenthaler Platz

w/mutant improv live & visuals by AIDS30.

Carpenter thrills, Italo Disco, New Wave exploitation: Like they say in Madrid, be a Fan or be pan.

labels >> AOR, SciFi, disco, electro, gosub, smith and hack