Audioccult Vol. 48: The Misery of Order

Light a candle. Draw the required sigils. Now, raise your arms above your head and slowly, gently, exhale your soul. You won’t need it here. This is Audioccult, and it’s time to get low. Illustration: SHALTMIRA

The idea of subverting subculture aesthetics and idealism has been a hot topic for several years now. Existing structures, once toothless, continue to be reimagined or reformatted for the Now, taking aesthetically from bits and pieces of other existing audio and subculture and recombining to form something new, without any of the outdated codes, stigmata or cheese of the originals. The idea of a linear genre, of mainstream and underground, is no longer applicable for thinking forward. Internet symbology and our relation to the world has become a key factor in life. The young artist feels a connection to the digital that goes hand-in-hand with their corporeal existence. Thus we are able subvert ourselves in ways perhaps impossible before this informational world existed.

Our BPMessiah emerges from behind red-smeared clouds in a generous show of patriarchy: “HERE COMES THE REMIX” booms the Metatron, lapsing into embarrassed silence as the Creator attempts a poorly-mimed record scratch with His hands. Techno as a talisman. Surrendering to the pulse that defines us and in doing so allowing ourselves to be redefined. A free thing that we perceive directly, without touch but touching us as a beat, as a feeling. We take it into ourselves, we move with it, never allowing ourselves to be a slave to permanance, to the negative stillness. A constant flux, a fixation of change without genres, without names.

“I do feel there’s a lot of old tropes and ways of naming things that is currently outdated.” Fostercare’s Marc Jason said to me while we were discussing music, but it is feels just as apt here. “I think the only solution is to commit to the unnamed.” Certainly the temptation to commit to the unemotion exists as well, or to the most simplistic—the body. Your desire. Skin the mediator of sensation, festishism the product of the mind. Saliva the bonding agent, sweat breath teeth nails. If life is a misery of order, let me take your hand and lead you to the chance floor.

Published March 28, 2013. Words by Daniel Jones.