Spring Breakers in Tampa Bay: Glorying in the Pirates' Beautiful Wreck

This piece was originally commissioned to run in the online version of Creative Loafing Tampa.  It was apparently declined - all I know is that it never ran.  Maybe why it wasn't wanted will be more clear to you than to me (I have yet to get an explanation from the editor).

People in Tampa Bay have been fretting about director Harmony Korine’s new movie, Spring Breakers, understandably perturbed by a film set in their hometown that is, if the previews are any indication, a serving of debauchery with a side of carnage.  I moved to Tampa Bay in August of 2011, bringing a completely clean slate.  I had never even been to Florida, but I was offered a job, and so I came.  As an outsider who has now seen the length and breadth of the Bay, and who has now seen Spring Breakers, I think the film gets Tampa Bay right.  Not mainly in the hedonism, the crime, or the murder, though I know there are plenty of those around here.  As anyone familiar with Harmony Korine must have known (his last film was titled Trash Humpers, and that title is just as literal as this one), Spring Breakers is not the simple exploitation movie it’s being billed as.  It’s an uncomfortable meditation that captures a feeling unique to Tampa Bay.  It shows a truth that’s difficult, but that should be treasured.

Much of what I found when I came to Tampa Bay reminded me of my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas: brutal heat, tatty public facilities, and a sprawling highway system and six-lane surface roads that marked it as a driving town.  There were differences, too – from St. Pete to Temple Terrace, the poverty was more in-your-face than at home, with panhandlers on every intersection and condemned homes around every corner.  Those unlucky enough not to own a car raced, Frogger-style, across those wide roads, infants in tow, praying for their lives.  Groups of men lounged aimlessly in the green spaces of grocery store parking lots.

Also different from home, though, was the multi-species parade of brighter things mixed right in with that abrasive reality.  There were the professionals that occasionally ventured from South Tampa, sometimes classy and more often delightfully cartoonish.  There were the hipsters, legion with their tattoos and mustaches, in bars across the street from by-the-hour motels.  In October of 2011, there were anarchists in the streets.  There were hand-painted signs for jerk chicken and oxtails.  There was a creative class throwing together shoestring and tape and getting things done.  There were the mangroves and vines stretching through suburban backyards like Father Knows Best got transplanted to Borneo.  There were the nonprofits and activists striving to make things better.  There were lizards sunning themselves on sidewalks, scattering with each step.

Spring Breakers’ story of hedonism and bad endings is just a superficial detail, part of the trappings that let this slow, smallish art film pass as a big deal party-caper flick (Amazingly, it cracked the Billboard Top 10 this weekend, but given broadly negative reactions from misled audiences, watch for it to drop like a rock). The movie’s soul, ironically, is on its surface.  Korine’s focus is on the feeling he hangs on his inconsequential plot, a hallucinatory strangeness fleshed it out with garish colors, ethereal voice overs, blunted melodies, slow pans, and harsh lighting.  The vibe is lonesome and desperate, like it’s all a frantic display of confidence by someone whose soul is crumbling.  It’s a feeling Korine said he found in Tampa Bay as nowhere else in Florida – darkness and light, in struggle, in flux.

That’s not something any sane tourism board would put on bus signs, but that doesn’t make it less true, or less valuable.  Tampa Bay is a place of decadence, desperation, and degradation, but also of possibility and excitement and change – and all for the same reasons.  Think of New York City in the 1970s and 1980s.  People lived in fear of being mugged or killed, but there was CBGBs and Keith Haring and Studio 54. Then Disney bought out Times Square and shut down the porn theaters.  Within what must have seemed like months, New York – the New York we dream of, the New York of Taxi Driver and Manhattan and Wild Style – was gone.

Spring Breakers is about the desire to change, and to escape, about how even when that desire gets pushed too far, it can still be beautiful.  Like New York in the 1970s, Tampa Bay is a royal mess because nobody owns it, and nobody controls it, because right now, nobody wants to.  It’s a place of both risk and freedom, where it’s easy to try something and the costs for failure (and here the film doesn’t get it quite right . . .) are low.  It’s a city being made before our eyes, a city whose future, unlike those of so many older cities, has yet to be written.

I was originally hired for a two-year job here in Tampa, but I’ve decided to stay and see what happens.  I think Harmony Korine would understand.

Record Store Day Picks for Abstract Electro/Hip Hop Heads

Going through the list of RSD exclusive releases is a fun trip - learning about cool new artists, and mostly, trying to spot interesting stuff based on names + art alone.

Here's what I'll be looking for, starting with the most exciting stuff:

GZA Liquid Swords Chess Box: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/6083 Whaaaaat

Brian Eno/Nicolas Jaar/Grizzly Bear: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/6103

Conny Plank + Neu! and others: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/6086

Evian Christ: DUGA-3: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/5826

Oval: Systemisch: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/6166

Ready to Die white vinyl: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/5906

TR-909 Book: Featuring Schoolly D! http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/6084

Non-Phixion: I Shot Reagan: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/6085

Dan Deacon: Konono Ripoff no. 1: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/5927  (brilliant title)

Moon Duo: Circles Remixed: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/5991

Codeine: What about the Lonely: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/6056

Cuntz: Aloha: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/6178

Black Milk: Synth or Soul: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/5969

Austra + Gina X: Mayan Drums: http://www.recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/5926


I'm sure I missed some good ones, lemme know.

New Glaciers of Ice: "Stuntn boysoldiers (Live Improvisation)"

This is the first recording I've done in a couple of years - a live improvisation at The Venture Compound in St. Petersburg.  It's great to be playing music again, and I'll be doing a good bit of it over the next few months.  Look out for more.

Notes for "Re-Wilding: Contemporary Psychedelic Music and Anti-Civilization Rhetorics"

For a paper currently under revision:

The sonic character of contemporary psychedelic music constitutes an argument (or at least an assertion) about the nature of signification.  Its claim can, however, be read in two ways.  Psych may be actively deconstructing the clarity of contemporary recording, just as Zerzan advocates for the erosion and eventual abolition of language.  Maybe psych is straining for some parallel musical form of the wordless 'pure experience' that Zerzan fetishizes.  Or maybe it's something quite different - maybe what psych is telling us is that the imperfection is where the appeal lies, both in music and in language.  Maybe psych is the valorization of the spaces between, of the failures - yes, of the apparent freedom those moments bring, but also of the continued struggle for clarity.

This is why were are specifically talking about contemporary psych, and particularly about its noisy tendencies.  Just as Pierre Menard could rewrite Don Quixote in the 20th century and have it received as an entirely different and brilliant work, contemporary psych musicians can harken back to the fuzz and grime and recording imperfections of their 1970s progenitors, and their sounds have an entirely different meaning.  They live in an era where some sort of perfection is possible, and they consciously reject that.

Also likely relevant - Greg Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever.

IT'S OUT! Blown Horizonz: Incidental Notes on Psychedelic Noise, Abstract Rap, and Other Music That Will End Your Mind

Note: I'm now blogging at Blownhorizonz.com.  It's more attractive, and it focuses more on cool stuff like music and fiction.  Check it out!

It's coming, it's coming, it's here.  Collecting over a decade worth of writing about mind-boggling sound, Blown Horizonz strips away the insignificant fuzz and takes you to the deep dark places where music can remake you, remake us, remake our whole society into something bigger, weirder, and more free.


I feel like out of all of the press I've received for this record, that your review is the first one to truly understand where I was coming from and what I was trying to accomplish.
-Dylan Ettinger

Enclosed please find a check representing the payment for your piece selected for Best Music Writing 2010. On behalf of Daphne Carr and all of us at Da Capo, I want to express our deep regret that necessity unfortunately required that your piece be cut from the collection.
-Jonathan Crowe, Editor, Da Capo Press.


Noise is the imperfection that shows us that the world doesn’t have to be the way anyone tells us. Because what is perfect is dead - If some bit of studio-processed pop manages to have a spark of actual artistic life, it is a fluke, a monstrosity, an inexplicable anomaly. The sunzabitches even managed eventually to get the vibrational frequency of ‘grunge’ into a studio processing unit and started making songs in which the distortion sounded careful and clean. It always happens, capitalism recouping some pretty and successful version of a chaotic failure that initially captured attention by being spectacularly WRONG and exciting everyone thereby.

I have witnessed on record and in life an ethical noise, an aesthetic refusal of what we are told to call ourselves, new tribes traveling nomadic routes that short-circuit convention. They were able to do what they wanted and face uncertainty and not panic, which to me seemed as magical and unlikely as Clint Eastwood gunslingers facing down imminent murder without blinking. As much as I’d looked for the darkness, I still carried with me and maybe always will a certain suburban-normal fear of instability, and I looked at the way they lived and I envied it but didn’t feel it was mine to have. I imagined into them some sort of purer unmediated relationship with experience and desire. I wanted that noise to enter the substance of my life, but I could not let go of what was clean and safe.

When something appears simple and clear we are easily deceived into thinking we understand it, and as soon as we are thus deceived we might as well be dead. Confidence and clarity are the end of change and possibility. Noise presents us with an impenetrable barrier and tells us only that we must confront that blank wall and make sense of it ourselves. What we find when we truly face the irrational is inevitably some version of ourselves and what we believe and what we want, truer than what we ever could have seen if we’d been staring at a crystalline Technicolor projection of another person’s dream.

Noise is the sound of not knowing the future, of not needing or wanting anything. Noise takes us to Interzone, to interrogate the black meat, to ask questions about just what is this world we live in, and how can we or should we change it. It forces us to think about change because it shows us that anything Anything ANYTHING is possible. When we confront the blank barrier of the unknowable, the absence of order and meaning, we can admit that we know nothing. 



Blown Horizonz is available FREE in a variety of formats from Smashwords for the next week (9/13-9/20). 

SXSW Post-Op: Sapphire Slows

I discovered a few great new bands and made a few great new friends at SXSW this year, and sometimes they were the SAME PEOPLE.  For example in this case - Sapphire Slows puts on an awesome show and makes awesome music and also simply is awesome, for good measure.  She played the Not Not Fun house party at Hounds of Love, and also the fantastic Impose magazine party at the Longbranch.

How I Invented Witch House

No, seriously!  I just noticed that Craig Eley, master of Field Noise, current member of Datagun and former member, with me, of Single Indian Tear, has posted our little-seen non-masterpiece, a 30-minute remix and re-scoring of Dario Argento's epic Tenebre.



This was performed about two and a half years ago, and while it's not nearly as polished as the Pictureplane or Salem stuff that was coming out at about the same time (in our defense, the sound here is from a live recording) we were really treading some strangely similar water - dance beats, analog synths, and vintage spook themes.  It's particularly striking if you check out the stretch from about 5:30 above, or the beginning of Part 2 below.

Part 2:

Sleep of Ages - Hercules Against the Moon

Sleep of Ages - Hercules Against the Moon-Men by Sleep Of Ages

I've been trawling Soundcloud (or is that trolling?) while I do a last mad set of JLPT drilling.  This track in particular jumped out at me.  Of course, if you're not into noise, it's unlikely to connect, so enter at your own risk.

Interview: Strotter Inst.

At the beginning of the month, I was lucky enough to get my socks blown off by Strotter Inst, a.k.a. Christoph Hess, a Nordic mad scientist who has modified a series of turntables into some retrgrade form of drum machine, and feeds them fragments of destitute twelve-inch corpses to produce hypnotic industrial polyphony.  I was so enthused I took the time to send him a few questions, and he was generous enough to answer them. (All photos courtesy of Strotter's website).

Q: This was your first time to Japan, what did you think about it?

A: I just stayed for one week, but I have had a great time impressed by the whole town, meeting all these nice and friendly people. And it was big fun to play again with SXQ from Tokyo, after we met on a Russian tour in
2008.

Q: Are the audiences here much different than what you’re used to?

A: As I am lucky to play in very different kind of venues and scenes, I'm used to very different audiences. But I had hardly seen such an enthusiastic one like in Tokyo. Another point is the volume the concerts were played and no one was using earplugs...

Photo Roundup: May 2011

A few highlights from the past few weeks:



Melt Banana today, 5/14



A really stunning juggler in Ueno park



A famous mural by Okamoto Taro in Shibuya Station. Apparently the central figure is the inspiration for the apocalyptic robots of the Evangelion cartoons.



Slovenia's most popular rapper, at a small bar in Koenji called One.



Noise and generative video at Soup, Koenji.

BRK(L)N Connections: Hip Hop and Noise and Music and Technology

Tomorrow from about 7:30 at the fantastic club Superdeluxe, the leftfield rapper Killer Bong teams up with Japanoise stalwart Hair Stylistics – Masaya Nakahara, formerly known as Violent Onsen Geisha – to do . . . something. I’m not sure what. But apparently K-Bong does it pretty frequently, and has performed in the past with a lot of other noise artists. There’s a three-way collaboration coming up in July between Bong, DJ Baku, and Merzbow (more info as it comes my way).

The connection between hip hop and noise is also being mined across the Pacific, where the single hottest rap crew of the moment, OFWGKTA, made a big portion of its bones in affiliation with the underground psych blogosphere, sites like Gorilla Vs. Bear that mainly traffic in spacey drone-pop and the softer-edged, lo-fi, Occidental version of ‘noise.’ Another current example is the group Shabbazz Palaces, who make rap that’s stretchy and dubbed-out enough to sit comfortably next to neo-hippies like Peaking Lights and Grouper.

But this is deeper than any of-the-moment trend. Hip hop and experimental music have been worshipping at each other’s altar since the early eighties, a source traceable backwards not just in the self-conscious path through DALEK, Cannibal Ox, cLOUDDEAD, Kid 606, Dr. Octagon, Maquinquaye, and Bill Laswell* (*figuring out why exactly he’s terrible deserves a separate post), but all over the pop charts and the hearts of the dismissed “old school.”

Here’s Rammellzee’s epic “Exterior Street” (1985)



Yin-Yang Twins "Salt Shaker" (2003), which still basically sounds like Can. I could also have linked J-Kwon’s “Tipsy” (2007), the stupidest extremely weird song I can think of.



And Lil B’s “Motivation” (2011), with Clams Casino mining psych to give us one of the greatest tracks of all time.



Why do these aliens keep surfacing in a genre that we tend to believe we’ve tamed? More than some weird micro-trend that’s kept alive by willful eccentrics, this is the inevitable return of the repressed – hip hop may have gone pop, but at its root are the same forces that have been explored more self-consciously by “art music” in both its conservatory and basement forms. Hip hop is a product of technology as much as of music – its lineage stretches to the turntable and sampler no less than to James Brown and Lee Perry (and there’s no Lee Perry without the reel-to-reel, a.k.a. the turntable before the turntable).

While Morton Subotnick, Robert Moog, and various inventors and entrepreneurs were pushing the boundaries of audio technology, the beatmatchers and backscrathers of the Bronx were encountering and harnessing the potentials that had already been released into the world – new forms of recording, playback, amplification, and (later) sampling and synthesis. But they weren’t just going with the flow – they were breaking things, overloading them, detourning them: the “scratch” is a more radical analog to John Cage’s prepared piano (more radical because it entirely reconceived the purpose of the turntable, though this was itself a repeat of another of Cage’s accomplishments). Add to that the fact that while rapping did derive partly from Jamaican toasting, which derived, along with reggae, from American soul and R&B (and thus has at least a link with rock and roll), another major source was the patter of DJs on southern black radio stations – here again another cultural innovation driven powerfully by technology (for more on this, including some amazing transcriptions of proto-rap from the 1950s, see Roni Sarig’s Third Coast).

There's something here about the relationship between the avante-garde and the everyday. Did experimentalists like Luc Ferrari somehow prepare the way for hip hop? There are, of course, a few direct connections, particularly how much the Bronx loved Kraftwerk. And never underestimate the determination of a music nerd to self-educate, even if they're mired in abject poverty. But I've never read any indication that people like Herc were consciously aware of those developments. The more plausible, and coincidentally much more interesting hypothesis would be that hip hop and noise are parallel outgrowths of our media and technological environment, though certainly inflected by cultural differences. The consequence is that whenever hip hop gets truly self-reflective, it has a strong tendency to turn into noise and go underground. Just about as often, the pop impulse in hip hop forms a channel for the welling up of strange machine artifacts into the mainstream of American life.

Strotter Inst: Turntable Beatboxing tonight at Soup

Last night I dropped by Superdeluxe for nine dollar beers and Jim O'Rourke, who turned out to be a little more than a decade older and schlubbier than I remember and playing some not enthralling Japanese-style noise.  But what was hamazing was this guy Strotter Inst from Switzerland.  You can't entirely tell what's going on from the photo, but in essence he has devised a very lo-fi drum machine by re-shaping vinyl, cutting discs so the stylus bounces or, more exciting, adding protrusions to discs that rhythmically slap against rubber bands stretched across the decks, on which the stylus is resting.  This video has terrible sound, but should make that awkward description clearer:



The output is almost as amazing as the setup - pulsing, ultraprimitivist dance music.

Strotter plays again tonight at Soup in Koenji/Nakano: http://ochiaisoup.web.fc2.com/schedulethis.html

This is a must-see.

Cool in Tampa: Gettin' Ready

So, it looks like in a couple of months I'll be moving from Tokyo to Tampa, Florida - I've landed a pretty sweet gig at the University of South Florida.  But of course, man cannot live on work alone, so I'm also trying to find out what's going on there artistically/socially.  If there's one thing I learned from living in Iowa, it's that there are creative types everywhere - you just have to find them.  I started searching knowing only that there's some sort of noise festival in south florida every year . . . and it took me about two hours to discover that there's a LOT of weird art happening in central Florida.

Last year's Tampa stop of the post-noise conference tour featured several bands from Tampa. Here's T-Func, Slave Scene (promising), Neon Blud (seem serious, touring), Tyger Beat (opened for Matt and Kim), Haves and Thirds (likes beats!), Father Finger (actual songwriting! Worth another view), Skeleton Warrior (blog's not updated . . . defunct?), Boulders (I think this is their blog? or at least their label?)

This year's edition, in Miami (Which just happened in February), also featured a ton of FL bands, including No Milk (Really great, and her blog is a gold mine of Tampa information) and Alien Overmind (electronic noise!).  Good writeup of top picks at Miami New Times.

Most exciting, Lazy Magnet is from Tampa, though may now live in Nashville (?).  This guy used to come through Iowa, though I can't say I remember seeing him.  Sadly, his Myspace (which has a friggin' great track on it) says the project is dead, but noise acts are like superhero sidekicks. He seems to really share my aesthetic - low, slow beats, heavy synths, and distortion.  Russian Tsarlag is also from Tampa, but doesn't live there anymore, and was never quite my cup of tea.

Not surprisingly, a lot of these bands don't have much web presence. I can't find anything else about Body Rot, Craow, Outmode, or Brides of Borg.

There seem to be at least a couple decent venues.  Events have been held at Cafe Hey, so I have a feeling I'll be spending some time there, though Google shows it's in a pretty bleak part of town.  The Czar Bar displays good taste in booking and Soviet design (twitter: @czarnation).  Iowa City's Supersonic Piss is apparently playing someplace called Heinrich's Workshop in a week or two . . . the only people listed.  I'm guessing it's a warehouse/house, always promising.  Seems there's a second house called the Branch Ranch Pervert Pit.  Proper.

Others:

Florida Experimental blog Terminal Beach Party

Ordinary Hungry - Warded Halls label and show listings

Cephia's Treat - Haves and Nots Label

Something called Auf Bees.  I have no idea what it is, but it's cool.

Civic Media Center, an infoshop in Gainesville, about two hours south of Tampa.  Apparently one of the U.S.'s largest collections of 'zines.

St. Petersburg Institute of Noise - St. Pete label

The Black Box Theater at New College in Sarasota, FL (one hour south of Tampa).

Also in Sarasota and NCF affiliated, the Four Winds Cafe

Action Research, concert series in Gainesville, many hosted at The Lab

There does seem to have been something called Tampa Noise Fest at some point, but I'm not sure whether this is just another name for the after-shows of the International Noise Conference in Miami.

WMNF Community Radio Tampa - Puts on some fringe shows.

Last.fm group Experimental Southeast

Bicycle Scavenger Hunt sponsored by a vintage scooter club? I'm there.

Re/Creating Tampa: A fellow former UT Administrative Assistant blogging about Tampa.


Naturally, I'm also finding a lot of good stuff in Miami.  It's four hours from Tampa, but unlike my days in Iowa, I'm actually going to have time to make that trip.  So:

Churchill's Pub

Sweat Records store

Roofless Records (label?)

Squelchers (Miami Beach)

Bruise Cruise! Rock n' Roll Cruise taking off from Miami.

So, all told, it may not be Tokyo, but it's a great step up from Iowa - a close-knit network of towns within driving distance.  Anything else great in Tampa and/or Florida that I'm missing?  Of course, I'm not just into the noise/freak scene -  I'll also be digging into the rap scene, and FOOTBAAAALL (I'm gonna meet Josh Freeman, I swear).

Review - Peaking Lights - 936

Peaking Lights - All The Sun That Shines from Not Not Fun on Vimeo.

This has already been reviewed back at Tinymixtapes, but I've been listening the hell out of it, so I thought I'd chime in.  This band has been with me for a while, since they were great friends with the Night People crew back in Iowa City, and would come through a couple times every year between 2007 or so and my departure.  When I first saw them, they were still a fairly sprawly, lo-fi psych act in some sort of Pink Floyd vein, but they quickly got more and more beat-oriented. 936 is the culmination of this - culmination in the sense that it's hard to imagine anyone doing the particular thing Peaking Lights do any better than it's done here.  If Pocohaunted eventually turned into a raging Afrobeat band fronted by teenage girls, Peaking Lights is the Upsetters of American Underground Psych - they lay deeeeeep in the cut, from the ruthlessly minimal Linn drum patterns to the lo fi recordings to the utterly deadpan lead vocals.  If you love analog warmth, tons of reverb and delay, and a steady, relaxed pulse, this is your record.

They have a decent sense with hooks, particularly on the track here, "All the Sun that Shines," but I can't say that's their real attraction.  This is, for better or for worse, a 'background record,' one that I put on while I'm reading, one with a deep atmosphere but not a lot of foreground.  Live, Peaking Lights is one of those bands made for closing your eyes and swaying gently from side to side, and right about now is the time when they have to decide if that's what they always want to be.  But in this moment, listening to this record, I wouldn't want it any other way.

Finding the Freaks

Over the years, I've developed pretty sophisticated freak radar.  After six months in Tokyo, slowly circling and infiltrating and honing in, I finally struck real gold last night.

This is an unfortunately pretty crummy cel-phone picture of Zool.Gel, aka Keito Suzuki (Japanese blog), playing at Nantoka Bar, an anarchist spot in Koenji I'm going to write more about soon.  That is a fountain of red goop descending from a shelf.  It dripped and plopped throughout his intense set, which included earphone-mics shoved into jars of goop, lots of looping effects, and most of all, this amazing hand-blown glass water-flute that produced some tremendously weird bird-like sounds.

As good as the show was, though, the weirdest part was the connection - Keito is part of the band Topping Bottoms, which put out some tapes on the Not Not Fun label.  That's the same label that put out a fair amount of stuff from Racoo-oo-oon and some other Iowa-ish bands that I wrote about for Signal to Noise last year.

I feel like I've finally found My People - especially since Zool.Gel also makes weird hip hop beats.

International Transport Volume 3 – Dirty Black Ships

“Tranquility now is just future anarchy unbirthed.”

International Transport Volume 3 - Dirty Black Ships (Temporary!)

In 1854, Japan learned the wrong lesson from America and the West.  There wasn’t any real choice – faced with guns, technology, and aggression, the alternatives were to either answer with more of the same, or to capitulate with the rest of Asia, South America, Africa, and Native America.  And so Japan modernized, from the top down, sending its greatest minds for immersion in Dutch Learning and its greatest spirits to the concert halls of Vienna to learn the even temper of the West.  This westernized elite had, arguably, even more power than those who inspired it, because in addition to wealth, they had unique access to a whole system of values – about individualism, freedom, and ambition – while Japan’s peasants continued to be fed the ideology of self-sacrifice.  They didn’t always buy it, the human spirit isn’t that easy to squash.  But enough of them did.

Today, things may finally be changing, in at least one way.  Japanese mainstream pop music is among the world’s shallowest, a wad of bubblegum shoved into the social eye of the truth, run by a mafia-esque elite machine which independent voices haven’t got much of a chance of penetrating.  But a bunch of artists and labels are working hard to change that – to get other voices out into the world, where maybe they can inspire some peasants.  This mix is a gift for all of them, inspiration from West to East, a mess of messages from the bottom to the top – from the workers to the kings, from the disgruntled to the complacent.  It's dirty but it's beautiful.  It's scary but it's seductive.  It's loud.

It’s something you get better at with practice.

Playlist after the jump.