Capitalism Encourages People

Quotation

«The capitalism encourages people not to care about each other but to compete. The economic depression gave an excuse to push working life into an even worse direction where an individual has less and less rights and freedom of choices. At the same time people feel empty and buy stupid snacks.»

The quote is taken from the podcast «Finding Unity Through Sound» by Joanna Karanka and Katri Sipiläinen, published 2017 on «Norient». Last accessed on December 3, 2020.

Biography

Jonna Karanka is a visual artist and musician. Her passion is to weave rya rugs and make psychedelic music with Olimpia Splendid, Kuupuu and IAX. Follow her on her Website.

Published on October 02, 2017

Last updated on June 27, 2022

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Capitalism

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Seismographic Sounds

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Ratkiller: Dreamhammer (Rotifer Cassettes 2017)

Ratkiller: Meta Music for the 21st Century

Review

by Lucia Udvardyová

The Estonian musician Ratkiller is a master of intertextuality. His recent album Dreamhammer (Rotifer Cassettes 2017) is full of samples from different sources: from Death Metal to 1980s Funk or porn movies. A review comment.

There are always other words in a word, other texts in a text, but also other melodies in a melody, and other music in music. Ratkiller is a master of this musical intertextuality. His new release Dreamhammer weaves a fluid intertextual, intersonic web, deftly sourcing and splicing his samples, that hazily pass through your consciousness. Liquid signifiers are stripped of their spatiotemporal origin and time dissolves.

The tracks are the product of an informal music fan whose idiosyncratic work is in dialogue with other music styles. The transposing is done so seamlessly that there's no mistaking it as just the sum of its parts. His techniques are crude – for instance, uses a media player as a sampler and creates rhythms with play/pause/back/forward controllers.

Dreamhammer by Ratkiller

Dreamhammer unravels with the cacophonic «Nasty Travesty» driven on the backdrop of Limbus 3's album New Atlantis. «Soiled Sheets» culminates after three minutes in a piano-driven apex (Frederic Rzewski sample) with echoing voices taken from a tape of Estonian pornographic stories. Therion, a Swedish death metal band, provide a buoyant start to side B, while «Art of Awaking» dabbles in 1970s spiritual jazz.

Genres and styles are allusive on this latest release by the Tallinn-based black metal fan Mihkel Kleis. It could be an 1980s synth/funk album, or21^st century deconstructed club music. «Music, rhythm, rigadoon, without end, for no reason», wrote Julia Kristeva, the originator of the term «intertextuality», in Power of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.

Biography

Lucia Udvardyová is a music journalist, curator, and organizer. In 2010, she co-founded Easterndaze, a project that aims to document and interconnect the emerging underground scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has worked with Czech Radio, Resonance FM, Cashmere Radio, The Listening Biennial, The Quietus, and The Wire, Central European University (CEU), and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), among others. Between 2016 and 2021, she curated and co-organized the Easterndaze x Berlin series that aims to bring together collectives from Berlin and the CEE region. She also gives lectures and talks and leads sound-related workshops. Udvardyová currently works for the SHAPE platform, a pan-European festival initiative that promotes innovative music and audiovisual art, CTM Festival’s discourse program and magazine, and she’s the film curator at WOMEX. Follow her on Instagram, and on her Website.

Published on October 04, 2017

Last updated on May 06, 2024

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Sampling

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William Hogarth – A Midnight Modern Conversation, around 1732 (photo: The Yorck Project, 2002)

Der Rausch und die Musik

Podcast

by Julia Vorkefeld

Ob Drogen im Club, beim Spielen von Gamelan-Musik auf Bali oder Alkohol auf dem Volksfest, Rausch gibt es fast überall. Eine intellektuelle Sinnsuche in einem Phänomen, das so alt ist wie die Menschheit selbst.

«Wozu der Rausch in dieser Gesellschaft meistens benutzt wird, hat damit zu tun, wozu die meisten Menschen in dieser Gesellschaftsordnung am ehesten gezwungen sind [...]; Arbeit. [...] Der Rausch wird dafür benutzt sich dieser ganzen Kontrolle, dieser Gewalt zu entziehen».

(Daniel Kulla, DJ, Autor und linker Aktivist im Podcast Music is the basic drug.)

Warum strömen wir jedes Wochenende in die Clubs, von Donnerstag bis Montag? Ist es das vermeintliche «Aussteigen» aus der Gesellschaft oder doch nur der kontrollierte Exzess zur Regeneration der Arbeitskraft? In ihrem Radio-Essay mäandert Julia Vorkefeld durch den Dschungel der zeitgenössischen Rauschkultur. Nach dem Vorbild Ernst Jüngers und seinem legendären Buch Annäherungen. Drogen und Rausch stellt der Podcast Fragen wie: Was ist Rausch, wie funktioniert die Rauschproduktion, wo und wie wird der Rausch verwendet und wie ist er in den euroamerikanischen Gesellschaften verankert?

Die Kirche hat es vorgemacht, selbst Martin Luther unterschied bereits zwischen gutem und schlechtem Rausch. Heute funktioniert das ähnlich, egal ob in den Clubs oder auf Festivals oder im Alltag. Rausch wird immer noch verwaltet: in gut und böse, effektiv oder destruktiv – und ist vor allem: stets ein Produkt der Kultur, in der er hervorgebracht wird. Der Podcast Music is the basic drug untersucht die Rauschkultur Indonesiens am Beispiel von Gamelan im Gespräch mit dem Experten und Musikwissenschaftler Dr. Varasany, die Rauschsuche auf Deutschlands grösstem Rave Mayday, aber auch die der Hippies der 1960er Jahre, die heute als Visionäre und Erfinder futuristischer Technologien gelten.

Biography

Julia Vorkefeld is a queer writer, radio-doc-producer, content creator, and saxophon-player. Her concern is with philosophical analysis and research of the «truth» in mainstream society to expose the myths and narratives of normativity and capitalism. She uses queer narratives with the vision to improve the Western society and give different perspectives of pop culture and society. Follow her on LinkedIn.

Links

Julia Vorkefeld: «Pop oder was: Music is the basic drug» (BR)

Published on September 30, 2017

Last updated on April 30, 2024

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Counter-Culture

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Capitalism Encourages People

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Ratkiller: Meta Music for the 21st Century

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Der Rausch und die Musik

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