s w e e t b e a t s
june.19.2002 - #971
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artist : Radio Boy
album : The Mechanics of Destruction
year : 2001
label : Accidental Records
genre : Lo-Fi
catalogue : AC03
url : www.themechanicsofdestruction.org
quality : CD 192k HQ True Stereo
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01.Mcdonalds 05:53
02.Manufactured Music 02:05
03.Rupert Murdoch 05:49
04.Television 00:28
05.Hollywood 05:00
06.Malboro and Bacardi 00:30
07.The Gm Food Chain 02:46
08.Gap 03:43
09.Oil 04:58
10.Coca Cola 05:21
11.Henry Kissinger 00:33
12.Starbucks 03:39
13.Nike 00:39
14.Rwanada 00:08
15.The Whisper of Friction 01:05
15 tracks | 42:37 mins | 58,7 MB
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Despite this album being in the planning stages for over a year, it
has suddenly found a whole new position in the world. Instead of
being seen as a personal soundtrack to western society's deliberate
and malicious empirical ambitions, it feels defensive in its
attacks on an America so tragically transformed.
I do however see a link between the position we find ourselves in
now and the attitudes and aspirations of the influential
anti-globalisation movement. Whilst it would be disrespectful and
dangerous to trace a direct link from the behaviour of large
corporations to acts of terrorism, there is now such a mass of
evidence to show how the relationship between commerce and state
has become so deeply entwined, it is impossible to imagine western
governments acting in matters of war where there isn't the promise
of profit. Indeed, Rwanda had so little to offer in terms of
resources or useful geographic positioning, the West turned a blind
eye (along with many others) to the rapid and predicted genocide.
Today it seems rather convenient that a vigorously violent American
retaliation, backed once more by an equally hypocritical English
government, turns not to Saudi Arabia from where the hijacking
pilots came and where the Taliban had received consistent support,
but to Afghanistan, a country whose population is dying of hunger,
who, to my knowledge has never committed acts of terror, either in
America or the UK, but whose country happens to be the central
point in the long-planned Unicol pipeline carrying the vast Caspian
sea oil reserves to an oil-obsessed west keen to move the flow of
oil away from the Saudi Arabian monopoly. One has only to look at
the illegal, vicious and devastating 'war' on Iraq to see how many
people we are prepared to sacrifice for cheaper petrol in our cars.
Cars which incidentally we should not be using anyway. It all
begins to feel very familiar when you consider that George W Bush,
like his father before him, is a fully paid-up member of the oil
companies. It is of no surprise then that Exxon, Bush's biggest
backer was so successful in wrecking the Kyoto climate control
protocol. The bedfellows of power and business have never been so
insidious or utterly dangerous.
There now exists a whole new breed of cynical politicians keen to
exploit the invigorated American mood to dampen calls for
fundamental shifts in policy, privacy rules and education
expansion, and promote such bizarre ideas as 'freedom through
trade' as US trade representative Robert Zoellick put it. One
writer even went as far as to imply that the reason terrorism
exists in places like Afghanistan is because there aren't any
Starbucks. As for the state of domestic commerce after all this,
the airline companies are showing that it's business as usual. As
an industry it fails its public by not providing adequate security
(unsurprising since it was vociferous in lobbying for minimum
security at airports) and then when the public choose not to use
its services anymore, demanded to be bailed out with taxes from the
same public it's been ripping off for years. If people choose to
stop buying my records in future, I am pleased to know that I can
expect the government to give me money to carry on regardless.
This underlines what has become the defining myth of our time: the
myth of the free market. The unashamed subsidies and tax incentives
offered to large companies; the heavily-weighted free trade
agreements that allow companies to use cheap labour abroad to raise
profits domestically; the de-regulated mergers position allowing
the creation of mega-corporations; monopolistic behaviour to put
rivals out of business, all coupled with the ability of these
companies to shift large portions of its wealth around the world to
avoid paying taxes; paying itself handsome performance-related
bonuses despite poor business results and generally paying as
little as possible back to those from whom it has drained the most.
It all contributes to a distinctly non free-market. Furthermore, it
appears that along with its memory, it has forgotten its
conscience. Hollywood has appeared to make no apology for its
continual representation of domestic terror as a worthy form of
entertainment and when it comes to TV, adverts including ones for
robot war-style kids' toys with strap on missiles continued
throughout the day on September 11th. Despite France showing no
adverts for two days as a sign of respect, American TV stations
hardly paused. In our hotel room in Manhattan that day, the
shopping channel was back in business by the afternoon. We should
also not forget in these days of anthrax scares that American
companies made and exported the stuff, including to Saddam Hussein
who was then bombed for not showing it to them.
These are not times when companies have suddenly started to act
with integrity.
It would be wrong to merely vilify single companies when often
whole chunks of the same industries are at fault. Nor should we
criticize companies just for providing products the public wish to
buy, although food is easier to sell with huge amounts of sugar
added. Coke for example is the most popular drink due, in part, to
the enormous and continuous annual marketing budget rather than
simply being the public's number one choice. Once again, the myth
of the free-market is that choice alone has determined the
population's consumption habits. Starbucks' ruthless pursuit of
local coffee houses to target blanket coverage of their own
peculiar version of coffee has less to do with customer choice than
unlimited financial reserves. The specific companies I have used
often serve as a spokesperson for their industry. For example,
whilst the Gap is a well-known entity, the rag trade as a whole has
undergone significant shifts by expanding its workforce away from a
domestic immigrant workforce willing to work for lower wages in
poor conditions and moved the whole manufacturing base to remote
countries with sympathetic governments and large poverty-ridden
populations.
Whilst Mcdonalds is clearly the biggest of the fast food chains,
there is no shortage of companies vying for their top slot and Nike
for example, for all its public criticism, may well now operate a
system of employment in Asia that is better than Adidas for
example. What is as important though is the public perception of
these companies. The hijacking of public space with advertising,
marketing and sponsorship has meant that advertising is consumed in
much greater quantities than factual programs, thus creating a
society informed by half-truths, exaggerations, distortions or even
lies. Weirdly enough though, instead of voting in elections, we now
are taught to exert our opinions through consumer choice: a very
one dimensional activity in comparison to voting which requires a
legal relationship with your representative, whether you choose to
exercise it or not.
In this shift then from state power to corporate power, the link
between Nike and Kissinger becomes clearer. Post world war two,
business-minded governments funded and empowered by their chosen
benefactors have more than ever pursued policies that serve only
'national interest' i.e. those companies or individuals with access
on enough of a regular basis to push their personal agendas. The
criticism of the behaviour of politicians is reduced to
examinations of private affairs rather than bloody indiscretions
abroad. It is this process of 'commercial selection' that has so
far rewarded Kissinger with statesman-like status, lucrative book
tours and protection from being brought before a human rights court
to explain how the murder of another democratically elected leader
on foreign soil is all part of the just war against communism. It
is also of no surprise that Nike trainers are now made in the very
countries Kissinger was so instrumental in 'freeing' i.e. arming
and supporting brutal murderous regimes who were responsible for
millions of deaths but were easy to do business with: Cambodia,
Indonesia, Vietnam etc.
As for the album, it had become time to make that link with the
political role played by my own music in a system I criticise.
Music is largely political in two principal ways, either operating
separately from the hegemony by offering either an escape or an
alternative, or by offering a critique of it. I have come to
realize that whilst alluding to my own political discontent in
harmony and lyrical metaphor (it was only in the song
'Hymnformation' by Doctor Rockit that I had been explicitly
critical of things: chillingly the phrase "we're selling anthrax to
our enemies") the time had come to present an overt critique of it.
What I find most appealing about this process, is that it can be
done without lyrics. Incidentally, the album was also completed
without the use of computer plug-ins.
Since music is the organisation of noise, the selection and
structuring of that noise becomes a metaphor for the organisation
of a society. If, as I started out, you are merely sampling the
noises from your kitchen appliances it is quite clear that you have
nothing better to worry about. If you are sampling the noise of
someone dropping cluster bombs on you, the selection is part of the
message. Therefore as my imagination has caught up with my
worldview, helped in no small way by writers such as John Cage and
Jaques Attali, the music on 'The Mechanics of Destruction' has
become my forum.
I also derived great pleasure from consuming these omnipotent
products in ways that they weren't designed for. I didn't drink the
Coke, watch the TV or eat the Big Mac. In part then, it's a chance
to reclaim these products that have filled the world's landfill
sites with non-biodegradable plastics and people's stomachs with
less than healthy food. It's also a journey of rubbish, turning
shit into music, the temporary into permanence, and the identical
into the unique. Whether you actually like the music or not, is an
entirely other matter...
This album is profit-free.
Track details...
Mcdonalds
Sole sound source: a Big Mac meal.
Mcdonalds has been at the forefront of the fast food revolution and
been responsible for the changing of local diets and taking a heavy
subsidy from governments for 'training' teenagers to fry chips.
They have also somehow been cultural ambassadors for the west,
entering previously hostile countries before governments officially
dare. Watch the rising rates of obesity that follow.
To learn more read 'Fast Food Nation' by Erik Schlosser and read
about the Mclibel trial.
Manufactured Music
Sole sound source: Hear'say CD.
The rise and rise of the manufactured band has led to a complete
distortion in the relationship between music and talent. The talent
now is exhibited in marketing meetings and style makeovers, relying
on stereotypes, perpetuating beauty myths and co-opting musical
genres to the point where signature rave patterns and music with
drug references appears for young children either as entertainment
or to sell merchandise from children's TV shows.
The systematic cynicism of selecting a band of unoriginal but
realistic survivors from a series of average victims might make for
fascinating TV, but does not promote the idea of people in control
of their own future or imply how the now standard large financial
rewards are for the pursuit of originality, skill or substance.
Rupert Murdoch
Sole sound source: The Sun newspaper.
I did originally use a copy of the Sunday Times and all its
supplements since it has a long history of printing stories at the
convenience of MI5, however it sounded shit. So I used The Sun
instead.
Since Rupert Murdoch pays very little tax in this country, his
newspapers and TV stations become part state-owned since they are
heavily subsidised. If we are to have a state media, I'd rather it
wasn't one with a distinctly hypocritical social agenda and an
array of sexist, trivial, violent programmes where intelligent
debate should be.
Television
Sole sound source: my grandad's old black and white.
In some ways a clichΘ, but still relevant in its continuous retreat
into the world of the facile and dangerous: Bar Wars, Ibiza
Uncovered, the presentation of the news (sponsored by Mcdonalds in
parts of America). The reliance on the image is a dangerous one,
not only in terms of individuals' self-esteem, racism or tolerance,
but also since the prevention of wars in far-off places is only
realized or enlightened by the imagination. The relationship
between information and government is so cosy now, we are left to
pick meaning out in between stories of rescued pets and so-called
'ethnic wars' clearly intended to baffle and disempower us.
Hollywood
Sole sound sources: a Bug's Life on DVD and Starship Troopers on
video.
Disney has had a long history of racist and fictitious versions of
history and it seems only fair they were included in this track. 'A
Bugs Life' is an allegory designed to create sympathy for a
hardworking society - the ants - and to pass judgement on a greedy
minority intent on stealing the ants' resources - the grasshoppers.
The fact that this fits perfectly with the current US foreign
policy of taking whatever it requires from others, often without
asking, makes for a possible subversive reading. Maybe those at
Pixar were responsible for genuine political comment. Hmmmm.
Paul Verhoeven's work has always aroused controversy in its subject
matter and poorly (or cleverly) executed delivery, but it is with
'Starship Troopers' that he goes the furthest. I could have chosen
any number of Hollywood action movies to illustrate the point of
how violence is seen as a valid tool of communication but Arnie,
Bruce, Mel, Sly et al. have nothing on the heights of death served
up in this film.
After reading an essay by John Pilger about Vietnam and how it is
still presented as a series of military blunders rather than a
totally unjustified and hideous war that killed much greater
numbers of Vietnamese civilians, armed or otherwise than US
soldiers, I can't help watching this film and thinking about that.
If in future years the director comes forward and explains how his
work can be seen as a series of devastating critiques of
contemporary society and cinema, I shall give him the benefit of
the doubt. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that he won't, and
they aren't.
Marlboro and Bacardi
Sole sound sources: 10 Marlboro, matches and a bottle of Bacardi
rum.
Very little needs to be said about the business practices of the
tobacco industry although it might be worth mentioning that its
sights have long been trained on the emerging third world/ Asian
markets and in particular women. This week the Japan tobacco
company which produces Camel amongst others, is cynically applying
for the patent for the potentially soon-to-be-discovered lung
cancer vaccine. As gigging musicians in the west we are lured by
high wages and VIP treatment by sponsors from both of these
industries in what is effectively a double whammy: whilst not only
using our musical and mildly famous personas to associate with
their products, they also use the events as a tax write-off, thus
siphoning-off money needed in hospitals to treat patients suffering
from diseases caused by their products. A situation the government
is reluctant to change considering the large tax income it makes on
the sale of both.
The liquor industry is hardly more responsible although, unlike the
tobacco companies, at least it doesn't add ammonia to its drinks to
make them more addictive. Bacardi though is known for trading on
its association with Cuba whilst simultaneously lobbying the US
government to prevent the sales of indigenous Cuban drinks and
employing unpleasant anti-Cuban representatives to present its
case.
GM food
Sole sound sources: Nestle's 'Cinnamon Grahams', Kraft cheese
slices and baby formula.
Nestle has long been boycotted by ethical consumers for its
ruthless promotion of baby formula in the third world as a
replacement for breast milk, thus exposing children to greater risk
of disease through infected water. Its products, however, now
contain numerous genetically modified ingredients and are presented
without consultation with the public or clear labelling. Kraft is
owned by Philip Morris, the tobacco giant.
GM food poses huge risks to the public both in its presence within
food and also through its farming methods. It has one sole clear
reason for development: commercial gain. The patenting of
indigenous varieties such as pilau rice, and recent attempts to
patent Thailand's indigenous fragrant rice by American companies
and scientists is the most recent by-product of this drive to
profit from nature. The development of the terminator gene to
restrict reproduction of patented strands of cereal is not only
immoral in every sense, but brings the risk of extensive genetic
pollution. The companies' cynically-aimed media initiative focuses
on the supposed benefits of not using pesticides but it has been
seen that these genetically `superior` strains also exclusively
require the companies own pesticide. Monsanto is probably the worst
of the relevant companies.
Gap
Sole sound source: Blue Gap boxer shorts.
Unashamedly using the tag line 'everyone in uniform' and writing
large cheques to members of the music and film industries to
advertise their one dimensional clothes should alert us to the fact
that this is a company intent on world domination. The fact that
their clothes are almost exclusively made in countries with
impoverished populations willing to work for low wages makes it
even more sinister. The use of labour in countries like Indonesia
with appalling human rights records (incidentally, armed and
sponsored by the west) is even more cynical when placed against the
companies self-consciously `hip` image.
Oil
Sole sound source: 2 cans of oil and 1 can of brake fluid.
The link between oil and destruction is a long and unpleasant one.
From the Gulf war, fought over control of the far east's oil
supply, to the division of Africa according to its resources and
the courting of brutal regimes such as Sudan and Burma for its
reserves; from the disastrous environmental spills to its vast
polluting off-shoots: petrol etc., oil has a decidedly unpleasant
effect wherever it appears. It`s time to switch to renewable
resources. Fast.
Coca cola
Sole sound source: one can of Coke, one can of Pepsi.
Since Pepsico also owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, it seemed
unfair to leave them off. Coca Cola`s self confessed ambition to
increase their market share from one drink served in four to all
four epitomises the greed that runs through the new class of super
rich. The 180bpm double speed section represents today's
accelerated culture that is all pervasive and all destructive.
Henry Kissinger
Sole sound source: the man himself.
There are so many examples of his insidious evil but really you
should check out Christopher Hitchen's book "The Trial of Henry
Kissinger" to get an insight into his role in the assassination of
Allende in Chile and to see a possible route towards retribution.
It is to my dismay that Hitchens has become such an ardent and
bitter advocate for war. Tom Lehrer apparently said he gave up
satire when he heard Henry Kissinger had received the Nobel peace
prize.s
It is a desperate society that endows such a privilege on someone
responsible for one death, let alone millions.
Starbucks
Sole sound source: One Caramel Latte and one Frappucino.
Quick to rise and hopefully quick to fall, Starbucks is a perfect
example of part of the new-school of post-Reagan/ Thatcher economic
'miracles'. It enters communities with no history, no pride in
locality, no sensitivity and nothing to offer except its
fictionalized version of the ultimate Italian coffee house. I guess
as a public we have to take some responsibility for its 'success'
since we have clearly drunk its grim fluids . Like fast food
though, it panders to the lamest part of our human psyche: the fear
of difference, the lazy return to routine, repetition, prediction
(of taste and experience) and unoriginality. Its fragmentation of
local communities and failure to offer physical differences other
than in the basic architecture of its branches has added its
cryptic name to the list of anodyne companies that now construct
our sterile, identical high streets.
Nike
Sole sound source: Japanese edition Nike 98 Air Max and Adidas box.
Whilst at the forefront of the west`s consciousness when thinking
of Asian sweatshops, Nike has apparently made an effort to clean up
its act. The feeble attempt to woo back the public is undermined by
its failure as a company to employ any domestic manufacturing
staff. Its use of countries with human rights abuses should be of
some worry to those who already think the battle is over. The track
is a lament to Nike workers in Indonesia that are paid $37 a month
(source: IMF) and as such is 37 seconds long.
Rwandas
It's hard to describe what it feels like to have lived through a
genocide that was predicted by UN staff on the ground and ignored
by those in power. Harder though for those who died as a result of
being a Belgian colony and then murdered with weapons supplied by
France, China and ironically Belgium. Philip Gourevitch's book
`Tomorrow we wish to inform you that we will be killed along with
our families` is an important read. The track is 8.5 seconds long,
one second for each 100,000 people killed, a conservative estimate.
The whisper of friction
In contrast to the musical description of negative subjects above,
the sounds for this track were recorded on May 1st 2001, the
traditional day of protest in England and elsewhere. Another in a
series of increasingly important protests against a corporate world
we refuse to accept. The track is one minute and five seconds long.
--themechanicsofdestruction.org
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s w e e t b e a t s
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greetings to kw, diss, dps, dh, ms, tr & ube
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