kodwo-eshun-more-brilliant-than-the-sun-adventures-in-sonic-fiction

07[110]07[111]Instead of being propelled forward by The jB's funk monaurail, therhythms frustrate all groove, impeding you. Melody is replaced by basssynths that stab, with the tension-inducing texturhythms of a tennis ballbeing bounced but never served. Constricting Zapp's Spandex bass intoan ounce of its bounce, the M500 synth generates basstabs which stressout the reflexes with their irregular regularity.In No UFOs, Atkins is disconnected from space by his conviction thatthere are UFOs: 'They say there is no hope/ They say No UFO / Why is yourhead held high/ Maybe you'll see them fly y yy yyy y ying iiingg innng.'No Astro. > Black coaxial cables. The space link is broken.Reece's audition of a nightime world, insidious Sprechgesang prowls themetroplex. Baleful bass miasma turns the air waxy, sapping your step,dragging you through a quagmire. Synth as malignant as Sarin gas seepsthrough the cybodrome. Entropy powers the Grid in Techno City,Destroit. In K. Alexi Shelby's All for Lee'Sah, his volumeless whisperslurs and shudders, cloaking its consonants. The batteries of thehunterstalker are running low. The chorus of reversed sighs and pinknoise refracts into the japanese word 'Hai '. It's a duet for predator andprey in which the Nastassia Kinski-ized voice, drained and indifferent,stutters until she turns into a flock of fleeing consonants.Things you haven't seen before are coming very nearHodelSOO[R}emoteSnatched into the fx zone, the voice enters what post-rock groupSaba Ion Glitz term the ufonic state. The ufo experience bursts acousticsapart in a fearful uphoria, shatters the voice into a host of polyvowels,the plash of tyres through rain, the echo of barrels rolling down a wetsidestreet in the cold light of night. Techno's anempathetic tonesempties all the heat from emotion, lowering temperature until you wantto shelter from your body's altered conduction. Putting the soul on icedisequilibrates your thermostatic balance, generating hallucinations ofthe skin, the sensation of being attacked by cold angles. You put adistance between you and yourself.Drive through the DarksideModel 500'S '85 Night Drive [thru Babylon] launches the Darkside ofDetroit Techno wherein bachelormachines stalk the night, rearing up ontheir hindquarters. Model 500 prowls the telephonumbilical connection, afurtive pervert obscured by synths. The voice slips past hearing as itsleeps like a dog, a subliminal shadow that creeps along the skin, stalksyou with its lightbreath: 'I'm driving through black on black in black.' Thenightdriver feels like 'a snake, sliding down the side of a glass square.'Suburban Knight's The Art of Stalking [Stalker Mix] and Reece's JustAnother Chance develop this drive through the Darkside. SuburbanKnight synthesises a stealthscape of sliding pizzicato through which thehypothermic predator lunges and darts, crouches and techsteps. InInside the Sanctuary of Shockwave: The Bomb SquadWe Are the DiagonalToday's science fiction starts with jack Womack's Elvisseyand PatCadigan's Synners, William Gibson's Virtual Light and Bruce Sterling'sSchizmatrix - tomorrow's Sonic Fiction begins with The Bomb Squad'spost-'88 tracktitles: War at 33.3, InCident at 66.6FM, Final Count of theColliSion between Us and the Damned, Terminator X to the Edge ofPanic, Terminator X Speaks with his Hands. For you, Chuck D's valueisn't as an ambassador but as an imagineer whose titles constituteCondensed Fiction: capsule epics of the Electronic Age, the artifiCialthought of the audioevent.The Engineer Crosses the GlassWith The Bomb Squad - Hank Shocklee, Keith Shocklee, Eric 'Vietnam'Sadler, Carl Ryder - the engineer, the producer and the programmerbecome a group in their own right. Backroom status is replaced by theexpertise of sound deSigners. As Hank Shocklee says, ' It's like somebodythrowing rice at you. You have to grab every little piece and put it in theright place like in a puzzle.' In the films Predator 2 , Ghost in the Shell,the Alien tetralogy, it's always the engineers who are ready to turn thealien into killer app. The engineer is the lethal conceptechnician, notforming a group but 'a technical assault squadron' all the more lethal forits anonymity. Deadliness lies in invisibility, in this retreat from the lightinto a public secrecy and private publicity.PubliC Enemy draw fire with the visible target of their logo. The