60+/-

Just as the dawn broke on a cold January night of 1982, the red telephone rung strident from its hidden niche in the gargantuan pastel bedroom where president Ronald Reagan slept, one exact metre separated from the android-like stiff and cold body of his wife Nancy. Californian dreams chewing tobacco in the hills that overlook Mexico, stroking the obscene barrel of a vicious looking widowmaker where thus interrupted, and the President stumbled over the thick carpet with a mixture of dread and quasi-sexual anticipation to pick up the phone,

President Reagan- ‘mmmmyello?’

Unidentified Voice- ‘Icy fingers of death are currently flexing around your tender throat, the cruel index hovers just one micron away from the carotid which pumps blood from your heart and into your brain. Fear most powerful man, for I am not a ghost but legion running amok the digital nervous system that governs the body of the warrior whose head is you. The guillotine drops’

Click.

President Reagan- ‘mmmmyeeello?’

This is but the beginning of one of those hidden episodes of history which one day, when all information is finally made free, will be examined, discussed and footnoted ad infinitum by stern scholars of homeland security and bureaucratic decision making. The history of the Xalor Xala Xatli cult will be traced back, from its early days in the fringes of the Californian hippie movement, a cabal of software engineers hanging out there with the Manson Family and some others gaunt freaks of bloodshot eyes for whom the trip took a dark turn, fingers stroking primeval keyboards instead of butcher knives, super-developed brains connecting lines in the schemata of an ominous plan: Apocalypse as the next step towards transcendence, the ultimate high reached by inhaling the orange smoke of a mushroom cloud engulfing America’s corrupt and bloated structure, infrastructure and architecture.

Deathly Fighter- Depth Charge

(Depth Charge is  in Deadly Fighter’s Completely Dusted album, which shall be released soon by Columbus Discount. There is an eerie crater-pocketed no-man’s land somewhere in between Blues Control’s single-headed psyche and Hyperdub’s future Giallo OST where this Carpenterian bass-heavy creeper crashes, and by jove if that isn’t a good place to be)

Biographies for teenage new wave savants and exiled Hungarian analogue chess-masters will also be written, that razzmatazz battalion of bad skin, beards peppered with breadcrumbs, social quirks and razor shap code-fu skills recruited hastily from low security prisons, the sprawling gardens of MIT’s campus, and sensory overload inducing  arcade halls to wage ASCII warfare in the belly of the abstract beast.

But none will be able to convey the psychedelic beauty of the ballet electrique that took place in the darkness of the system for 48 hours after that fateful call.

Think of a three-dimensional battlefield engulfing the continent, dotted with lights which are hardware terminals networked via n square 9 routes, a battlefield where up and down are obsolete concepts, teletransportation fact, and time chimera.

Think of roboglider squadrons fluttering inside this cube with the intricate logic of origami, electron packets loaded with informational napalm speeding across empty optic fibre corridors, searching for a hole in the structure, a vulnerable connection to corrupt with a stream of 0s and 1s that spell ‘DIE’.

Think of neon vectors slicing and dicing this neon cube, against a cat cradle formed of logical threads whose every molecule is a defensive command, and a counter-attack move.

Imagine two pairs of disembodied hands trying to grab each other’s wrists, if every pair of hands belonged to the most deft magicians in the history of tricksterdom. All of this while the ghost that lives inside the machine watches, invisible and in flux and bemused.

This is the sound of what happened.

Soft Metals- The Cold World Melts

(Soft Metals’ the Cold World Melts is a stealth fighter with a thousand lethal weapons bristling under its sleek carbon wings, buzzsaw Orlando bassline and invincible italo riffage, swirling spiral of mind melting EMP synths and spectral diva propaganda. We surrender as its threatening dragon-like shadow spreads over our positions. They will be releasing something on sweet vinyl soon, we shall keep you informed)

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20jazzfunkgreats is back at the Old Blue Last this Saturday, jamming in our hardcore nonchalant styles with a special appearance from one Lord Nuneaton Savage from the mighty Teeth of The Sea. Come down, 8-2, free entry. We took the artwork above from here, which is like, the coolest thing ever.