Audioccult Vol. 83: Preview Our Fall/Winter ’13 Collection Now

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

As a year that I affectionately like to refer to as Garbage Year draws to a close, I’m warming up my screenprinting equipment (not for any particular reason; it’s just nice to work next to warm things) in preparation for Audioccult’s new line of Fall/Winter clothing. There’s no more money and that means it’s time to make and sell things you won’t want in a year. We’ll have all the hot slogans slapped on fabric, including references to things you may have heard and mercifully forgotten, words you aren’t sure exist, dirty words, free words, words from the Lana del Ray trap remix that say Have Sex Tonight because you’re a stud, bud. All the words are here, on clothes engineered to protect your body from the cold, though not in any practical way because they are all T-shirts. I encourage toughing it out.

“Where’d the money go? Where is it?” The truth is I’ve made some really bad investments this year. As an American living in Germany, there are quite a few of subtle cultural differences that intrigue me. Take the high frequency of witch figurines present in German bars, particularly Kneipen. What’s the symbolism? Is there a secret society of underground occultists lurking behind the veil of smoke and boot-cut jeans? If I play schlager records backwards, will Satan tell me to try out for Eurovision? In the interests of esoteric philanthropy, I’ve been slipping sigil-covered envelopes of money under the doors with my contact info, and as of November 28th, the only contact I’ve had that can be considered even vaguely unusual is a phone virus that turned all my MDC ringtones into MP3s of your gross nerd friend who says “bowchikkabowwow” all the time. The audio quality is also terrible.

I’ve also spent far too much of my free time investing unwisely in a better class of Klaus Nomi remixes, a form of music I’m on record as describing as “the future”— often repeatedly and at increasing volume. As a bridge between German and American avant-garde, Nomi’s music remains one of the most unique examples of cross-genre pop to capture the public ear. Yet, almost without exception, any attempt to update his sound seems to exist in a perpetual gray sludge of excruciatingly dull house and techno remixes. The cost of organizing the remix contest combined with the logged studio times for the winning producers was about equal to the damage I caused to my wall when I woke up to an inbox full of Klaus Nomi dubstep remixes.

That’s why I need you to buy my T-shirts. Buy one T-shirt or all of them. Take these shirts off my hands, and put them on your body! I need the cash pretty fast, as I’m currently investing in a remake of Nymphomaniac. It’s basically the same movie, shot-for-shot, only instead of sex it’s about a pizza party, and instead of Nazis I’m going to go to Cannes and talk about how there’s never enough cheese or sauce on European pizzas. ~

Published November 29, 2013. Words by Daniel Jones.