Saturday, April 26, 2008

Illness/Alienation



Although the original SPK were of course loons, they were (and are) still interesting. And the letter touched upon quite interesting factors of our world, such as the fact that the capitalist machinery/system builds on and needs illness/alienation (or as it is put in the letter (although it is not Sartre's words), ilnnes and alienation is the "prerequisite and result" of a capitalist system.). In other words, the capitalist system needs us to feel alienated in order to consume so that we by consuming is trying to rid ourselves of the alienation. What the SPK did was taking that one step further and say that mental illness is a form of alienation (if I understand it correctly), that we all are mentally ill and what defines the 'healthy' or the 'cured' is the ability to work (although that is more or less a paraphrase of Sartre's words).


On another note I am listening to the Fixmer/mcCarthy-album "Between The Devil." Pretty good. At times Fixmer's techno influences shine through a bit too much and makes the thing feel a bit stupid (I know, I like VON and Archgoat and shouldn't talk about stupid music), but mostly they keep it under control and make those influneces just sound nice and monotonous. Which I like. No songs that directly stands out but then again, when it comes to electronical music it tends to take a while for me to notice such things. I'm quite surprised at the ability to make the album sound so 'alive' and pulsating, yet quite monotonous. I quite like monotony in music but it has to feel alive and I think they pulled it of somehow. I just can't really put my finger on why.

...and I listened to a new Nitzer Ebb song called "Payroll." It really sucked. All I could think about was Rage Against The Machine when I heard it. Awful. But the thing that made it awful wasn't as much the music as the vocals... I can't really describe it but it sounded old in a bad way. Dated (outdated even!). 15 years after it't time. I hope they don't think it's some sort of hit or something. I actually remember seeing them playing it live and remember thinking "well, this was a bore." And you know what else? They remind me of Venom, however strange it may sound. They played live 6 months earlier, they played mostly old hits and the played a new song that sucked ass and it sounded like "payroll"!!! I mean, the phrasing of the vocals was similar and I remember that I really was a bit disgusted by that song ("House of Pain").

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