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

07(130)07(131)Electric circuitry confers a mythic dimension on ourordinary individual and group actions. Our technologyforces us to live mythicallyMarshall McLuhanIlluminator meets The Cellular Automaton.Each component excites another in an adventure of concepts.Machine Music is cosmogenetic. It perpetually generates 'mythic worldsof electronically processed experience.'The Possibility Space of the SoundclashThe space invaders have migrated from the screen, left the arcade toinvade London. On Tony McDermott's 70S Marvel Comic-style cover,Scientist is a superhero in limegreen top emblazoned with an S, yellowsleeves, bright green pants and purple boots, firing laser shots andaiming kicks at the pixel-sprite formation landing in a grey carpark inNorth London. Beside him, a woman crouches and squeezes off at analien. A mother in a red all-in-one, with a 70S Afro, turns, frozenfearfully with her kid, as a blonde hits concrete.Organised sound clashes in the mix. The 3rd momentary trackemerges from the convergence of 2 tracks. Each record sheds its date,escapes its context. This process dissolves the lines of association,dehistoricizes each track. At the same time, mixology rubs eras againsteach other, generates the temporal friction of anachronosis. Time slipsout of its date, vaporizing history at plus 4 on pitch adjustment,frictionalizing it at plus 5. This proliferation into networks of time formsthe heterotopias where Scientist Meets the Space Invaders. Dub'spossibility space of the meeting functions as a psychoacoustic fictionalplane where worlds collide. Each element in a futurhythmachinemythology is a communicating vessel. The 12 becomes the sonic weapon.The decks become a platform where aliens attract: Scientist meets StarChild, Pacman meets Astral Apache, Silver Surfer meets the ShockwaveRider, Captain Afro-America meets the Double Dutch Remanipulator,Supernaut meets the Camouflage Ninja, Funk Igniter Plus meets thePurpose Maker, Firekeeper meets Killah Priest, the Suburban Knightfaces the TX Reanimator, Thousand Finger Man meets Sweet ExorCist,Doctor Eich meets Mr Gerbik, Lord of the Null Lines meets the TerrorMad Visionary, The RZArector meets Dr Ludicrous, Dr Strange meets theSpectral Nomad, Iron Man meets Gamma Player, Godard's Tarzan meetsIBM , GhostDancer meets Ghost Face Killer, Cybotron meets TheWindwalker, Dr Blowfin meets Von Blofeld the Black Lotus, The DataThief meets Pluramon, Hallucinator meets Dark Magus , Gigi Gal axymeets the Black Regent, Mr Freedom X meets Masta Killer, Veinmeltermeets Sci -Clone, Secret Girl kisses the Man from Tomorrow, TheMaterializing Offworld Revolutions:X-102 Discovers 'The Rings of Saturn'The moment the belief that the street is the predetermining law andlimit of all black popculture is destroyed and disregarded, the postwarRhythmachine will-to-conceptualize becomes immediately andoverwhelmingly audible.Far from beginning in 70S Britain and ending with punk [as mediafolklore so fondly maintains) the Progressive Era opens with Sun Ra. Andtoday you live in a far more conceptual era than Progressive Rock everdreamt of. 4 Hero, Killarmy, Dr Octagon and Red Planet fabricate concepts,perpetuate Digital MythSystems and proliferate sonic theories far moreexcessive than Gong's. Machine Music is exuberant in its exorbitance.Trad white journalism is affronted at the news that ex-UR producerJeff Mills thinks in concepts. Querulously, it ponders how and why sucha thing could happen. And starts seriously to doubt whether Black MUSicis really safe in his hands, or Tricky's, or Dr Octagon's.It isn 't. It never was .Mesmerized by belief systems left over from HipHop, Trad mediasleepwalks through the sensorial implications of Sonic Fiction, deaf toits formal operations, terminally unable to comprehend the perceptualillogic of your Age.Unblack Unpopular UncultureOnly journalism can deliver you to sound safely. Futurhythmachinesform a discontinuum that is utterly indifferent to the street. MachineMUSic therefore arrives as unblack, unpopular and uncultural, anUnidentified Audio Object with no ground, no roots and no culture.