Sometime in the mid-nineties when still absolutely devoured by this insane technology called VHS in conjunction with even more insane revelations of the satellite TV (that my dad was installing for private households all around the country suddenly awaken in the new post-socialist reality, having me as his underage henchman of some sort) skipping through channels and recording my „collages”on worn out VHS tapes, my finger slipped and I accidentally encountered maybe three or four highly distorted guitar bars sounding absolutely dark, incomprehensible and—most of all— otherworldly.
It was a news flash from a Czech street avantgarde theater festival and the crowd gathered around some flame-busting actors or whatnot, waiting for probable lavish and grandeur entrance of some artistic deity— but the real surprise came from among them: this dark-clothed older guy just cruising between the members of the audience with a long slick tail of an instrument cable hanging out of his almost completely worn off Telecaster of some sort, and playing over and over three, maybe even two of the most easily recognizable random blues chords, but in such heavy distorted manner, with so devilish grit and verve weirdly rapid or elongated that I was instantly absolutely mesmerized by his style. I even forgot to push REC, so that’s why now I got only just this (probably overly exaggerated) feeling of something overwhelmingly profound. But it was the feeling of complete chaos and freedom where I just finally felt at my place (having, of course, my initial experiences with guitar music rooted deeply in the—then underground—instances of early thrash and death metal genres).
I’m still chasing that „thing." In about everything I can think of and I’ve been doing since then.
Almost decade later, in 2006—I went to a quite intimate place, to see a guy I only once before heard about in the circles of hardcore and post-hardcore community in my earlier years growing up in Szczecin (city that which to this day stays the source of my most disjointed fantasies). Guy’s name was Fred Frith, and that evening he did, to my understanding of music, some most exquisite and exuberant damages with just a garland of metal beads and a bowl of crispy fresh rice. Since then I have only craved unpredictable randomness in anything I could ever encounter.
Anyway, have any of you ever watched „The Birth of a Nation” (1915)? Wild, just straight-up evil, vile shit.
So here’s my disjointed response to the totalizing forces of nationalism—in a form of instrumental trilogy composed for electric guitar.
Also: have you ever considered how funny it would actually be if Nicolas Cage were the natural-born son of John Cage and his stylistically wild performance choices were based on his father’s theories?
That’s the reality I would want to live in.
Exercises of arrhythmic and polyphonic futility. The darker it gets, the more distinct it becomes that the world outside is just another bubble of harrowing post-accelerationist demons. Nothing is transparent anymore. We're breathing the prevailing ideology like dead air. Listen—
