Grab a shovel.

But this year was different than most even if realistically its a number or a notch on a calendar in an industrial yellow room somewhere in a complex similar to Romero’s “Day of the Dead.” A particular day I celebrate by inking the Korean word for ‘corpse’ in my forearm in something far less rooted in angst and more in an honest attempt at humor. Nostalgia, as one may have surmised, at this age is either a hopeless cannibalization of a buried past or a valid exploration of a moments that sprout from crop circles to be harvested of their vital nutrients. Its the difference between some fractal horn of plenty and some sort of Geiger inspired neo vampirism.

I woke up Saturday morning from whatever godawful events had transpired the night before; stuck in a basement with the fear that the spit being directed in my right eye carried by hopeless shop talk was herpes free. Because herpes of the eye isn’t quite yet in fashion. And even if its on the verge of becoming some street trend, I personally have no intention of sporting it in the Spring.

So the first and only thought upon waking I had was a cosmically scary one. I couldn’t tell if it was just residual echoes from a rem sleep or one of those ‘hand of god’ moments. Shit, maybe it was just my liver talking. But I thought back to the days I spent making shitty zines that had no real audience or least none that were surefire and built in. It was the same zine that almost got me expelled from high school. And the same pieces of paper that introduced me to my first serious girlfriend; a raging, industrial strength heroin addict.

Whatever thoughts or nightmares happened in my coma state hours earlier had reminded me about FAIR, a two-day local maker and publisher fair at UIC’s Gallery 400. Terence Hannum, of Chicago based avant doom outfit Locrian, had sent me an invite via the venerable or venereal (you make the call) FB weeks prior (henceforth simply referred to as Fabu.)

And just by chance I guess, I remembered. And so I set it in my mind to go and check out his talk which turned out to be one of those serendipitous ‘glad as fuck you left the house’ moments. Those are always luck of the draw. Sometimes I feel like there’s a way to influence the probability by making smart bets. Because for the most part its not really a gamble. Its just all a matter of how much you walk away from the table with.

And so I listened to Terence speak about nostalgia with a guarded tone as he spiraled back in time. Onto parent’s office xerox machines that we all commandeered and lovingly applied cut out images on letter paper. I have a fucked up memory of one of those times that shines like a black eye with the stench of deja vu. I have a couple of those moments actually. Ones that carry some sort of timeless weight. Genuine cosmic moments maybe. Moments worth going back to like some crazy eyed stare from a shadowy corner. Maybe I was there in some sense. Maybe I felt myself watching myself, stalking whatever it was I was doing like the days of christmas past.

But the important point to make comes in the tacit knowledge gained from those days. The resounding idea of the lecture was pretty simple; so almost heretical that it warranted the comparisons to gnosticism. The idea that any form of underground expression resurfaces as a reaction and a sort of activism for change. And that somewhere in those early stages of anaerobic life develops a new language and secret communication. Objects and icons lose their chains and shackles applied by lazy debutantes and hedonists. Things are reclaimed from the dust and given new purpose. And their secret arts begin to become unfathomable for a time by the general population. The rules change and alienate not out of spite but out of desperate measures. A holy war erupts of sorts and the stakes are brandished with impunity.

So you have to ask yourself where does the return to printed media come into play? Why not just continue to write a blog on the internet that only a few people have the patience to put up with? Why not just promote your band with countless face book fan pages and spam invites to events that no one will ever attend? Why not just try to write the ultimate club banger or maybe why try at all? Its a hard question to quantify and an answer like “I feel like…” with a long trailing pause is a testament to this heresy. To quote the haunting lyrics of one american vocal group, Exposé: Seasons change. Feelings… yeah bro.

It was the fear I felt in a hotel room hunched in a tight ball mumbling over and over the words that didn’t make any bit of sense. I labored over that for what seemed hours. Almost like a scene from the Canadian movie Ponty Pool where viral words drive people into insanely senseless beasts. I had feared that I had painted myself in a corner. That I had become something that I had no real intention of becoming and was reviled for it. If the frequency of middle fingers and smeared snot on shop windows were the portents for what was to become of the journey. I was too far gone. When was I going to assimilate? When was I going to standardize? When was I going to close up shop? When could I be that guy some pompously observant friends see five to ten years later at some bar and not be referred to as “Good Old Tim with his finger always on the pulse.” Like a vampire or a medical doctor. Thats the question isn’t it?

One of the more interesting ideas put across by the Q&A was the reference of Terence’s work as a ‘practice.’ Which I can’t think of what the converse of that would be. But it certainly evokes images of some sort of physician or magus and less of a corrupted and gnarled Nosferatu silently stalking prey. Nosferatu is super creepy after all. I’ve seen pictures of that mother fucker. And he might as well be my doppleganger. Or at the very least my prodigal son. And thats a very real fear mind you.

The fear of never being able to heal yourself of whatever plagues that follow you in this landscape of ash. The idea that the snake oil sales at the country bandwagon are the cure all for the sickness in all of us. That easy mode exists and west coast superstar religion is hella real. That there’s some way to market this to sell records, make money and fool people far more younger than you and with far more interesting ideas. That people you can keep the cocaine coming and the drink tickets flowing. And that you can fuck your way out of the hole inside your chest.

I’ve come to accept that it works for some people more than you would imagine. I’ve also come to expect that people respect when it doesn’t. I’ve come to draw the line in the sand that it won’t work in my singular case. I’ve got a bad disease after all. But I’d like to think its a disease you can respect. There’s something to be said for honesty. And some of the most honest people are the most misunderstood and heretical. Thats just what comes with a lifestyle full of esoterica and fake blood, I guess.

Just don’t ask me what it means.

You can view Terence’s work at http://www.terencehannum.com/.

You can also listen to Terence’s band Locrian at their myspace http://www.myspace.com/thelocrian

You can download and listen to the Grifty podcast at the following links.

download Entro MC presents the GRIFTY001 podcast directly

Tracklisting forthcoming.

Whether or not this is the official soundtrack for urban longing depends on your points of references I guess. Taking time into consideration, we can reference Matthew Fuller’s classic lists as used in his excellent analysis of UK pirate radio in the nineties. Four decades of RNB. Turntables or tape decks. Pitch Control. At a bare minimum both have similarities in terms of what might be best described as a music called ‘drag.’ Drag is far from having a wide cultural effect at least for now. But it exists in its own temporal warp acted upon by the here and now to be something wholly different. Though its impossible to imagine it without the events that transpired prior. Just as breakbeat, jungle and dubstep utilized the same alchemical elements to create a lifestyle that lasted arguably at least ten years in terms of validity, drag could certainly plausibly follow suit.

Then again you’d have to have to imagine what a party would be like centered around four hours of rhythm and blues weighted down to a deliberate and prodding pace. I’d imagine it might it might appeal to a room full of heroin addicts staring at the ceiling watching their lives melt and nod away. And that might be the most romantic way to describe it. Which brings me to potentially a nightmarish conclusion that drag music is the living embodiment of existential acceptance and/or the discerning junkie jams of choice.

By stripping and burning away the sheen and the production what is left is a shambling ghost rife with ugly nostalgia and rotting memories. Its indescribably hurt filled and mournful. It’s the bare trudge and the bitter playback of words and lyrics twisted by format and the hand behind the controls. Whether “Freak to you” now sounds like the plea of a starving timber wolf panting for some sort of warm flesh in the midst of the tundra or “Easy Street” is now reimagined as spat through clenched teeth watching your retirement fade away in the vapor is generally left up to the listener.

It’s always been the defense of mine when speaking about recontextualization; copyright and sampling that rules are often way too idealistic and opportunistic in nature. In these pocket autonomous zones that have warped into existence causing rifts in space and time, they’ve always started out basic and feral. And it’s on that cusp where fetishists and bored debutantes might collide. After all they may as well be one and the same. It’s interesting to note that dance music has always been the most resistant to this autonomy. A subculture baked and cooked into the brains of over a decade of listeners who may or may not have had their first psychedelic or narcotic experience in a dirty warehouse in the pitch black. Listening to the bare minimum of a drum machine and a Roland 303 cycling the same pattern over and over affected by oscillation and black market pharmaceuticals. Rooted in the authortative and draconian systematic of beats per minute and fragilely held together solely by that measure of time. And might I add, marginalized by such math, galvanizing its population into genres, cliques, and crews.

With rave nostalgia in full swing and internet groups reminiscing about the ‘where are they nows’, it seems like as good a time as any to come to grips with what happened in your own way. Some people want to relive the past by attending various revivals and staring at photographs of moments that now so very warped and faded in memory. They want to sit back and tell stories of how great it was. I can tell you stories. You’ve heard them all before. They are all mostly bad. They are all mostly idiotic. They are all mostly things I do not wish to relive unless they are morbidly amusing.

But they sound like this if I were to transcribe them to audio. The promise of escape from the inescapable. Trapped in sewage and sludge, fighting for a reason to keep breathing. A six am after party cross legged on the floor shifted in and out between waking and dream state like windshield wipers silently scraping across your eyelids. Moments passing like bad frame rates, jittering and wrapped in cellophane, moderately aware that your vision is now completely peripheral. Staring down the barrel of a long dark tunnel and stumbling around in a puddle of mud, shit, and collapsed bodies undulating on themselves. Telling myself, these are so the times of my life. That’s what the commercial says. This is what I want to be. I’m going to be a dj. I’m going to make money following my dreams and paint by numbers, one 32 count intro and one 64 count breakdown at a time.

That to me is the essence of drag city. The ecstasy hangover of a decade taken and personified in a genre. A cracked out sunday and a fried eagle mind. Who does it cater to, quite possibly a select few. But more importantly, its what it inspires and the synchronicity that speaks from out the void using puppet language to mouth clarity into seemingly shallow words.

Things die. Things can be reborn. They can never be the same as what they were and there is a solace to that. To see things grow old and wither away hanging onto to some semblance of sediment. A family, a dream, an old photo, a favorite song, and a memory. A list acted upon by human hands always has a completely unexpected outcome. Or at least it should. If it doesn’t then maybe the formula needs to be rethought and the tougher questions need to be answered. Like what the hell are you doing holding on to those things in the first place.

I’m sure one day, we can lay the groundwork to bring to you the ultimate slow music party. And people will come from far and wide to sit cross legged on the floor wrapped in a large blanket until five in the morning. And we will decree the rise and the fall and mark the years on the calendar. We will publish ourselves a coffee table retrospective that will litter the condos of well to do graphic designers and college professors. And we’ll occasionally over a moderately expensive bottle of red wine and an exotic epicurean delight wax poetic wafting the glass in swirls in the air.

You know, quite unlike the nineties. Somehow now I’m ok with that if it happens. Because this time, its about more of what I want than what I can get or where I can fit. Until then, we have a little party going on here and we are at full capacity.

entro mc “drag city (demo)”

You can follow Brendan Telzrow to learn more about drag on twitter here

Moments before the conversation had drifted into the night prior at the Hideout for Psych Fest, an event showcasing the talents of bands such as Dark Fog, the Plastic Crimewave cats, and others. Somewhere within the first five minutes it was obvious that a person, high on presumably some type of psychedelics, tried to walk directly through me. When questioned he mumbled something about the vibe being pathed in that general direction. In context now of my conversation with Adam, we had wondered if the vibe might actually move in accordance to the cardinal directions of East to West. If the random shouts out from the band to the metaphysical bikers can be taken as a personal indictment of the lifestyle, this may be all too correct.

I feel like that whenever I start any sentence of with “I feel like,” a long litany of bullshit is sure to follow. Like I could simply say something to the effect of “I feel like nuclear war would be kind of cool at this point.” And then talk of the wolves of chernobyl, the peaceful quietude and magic of some Tarkovsky inspired wasteland. But as a counterpoint to that, I feel like its already here. That some sort of psychic meltdown has churned from the metaphysical reactor. That we live as mutants in the black light afterglow baked in tape hiss and fucking late night pizza parties.

The day after a bout like that one, drinking whiskey and hamm’s and being called out by the man playing ‘guess the number for free liquor’ on the microphone as “multicolored dude” gets me thinking a great deal. I’ve sat for hours the last week staring into a webcam and being assaulted by a wave of dicks, figuratively and literally. Hooked into some fucked up networked dystopia in the form of Chatroulette and simply staring back at the void. I’ve been called everything from white trash to skinhead to hardened criminal. And there is something very settling in these five second fight or flight observations in the wasteland. Like wolves running in packs and baring teeth at each other. Wolves run. They don’t dance, motherfucker… at least not the wolves of Chernobyl.

There is something in the lay lines lately that begs to be followed. Bits and pieces of information are like little signposts. Like the triangles that reappear through the ether on walls and tapes like bleak, astral, Jungian black holes. Like the miniature die cast image of Kali hanging out in my front pocket sent to me randomly from a friend. Or the two free dual marantz tape decks donated to whatever cause it seems I have taken upon myself to occupy the wasting away of whatever time is defined as what I have left.

I feel like nuclear war is now. That the warheads are chock full of herpes, awkward moments, shop talk about how you can make money doing what you love, and industry nights dedicated to a series of nightly disappointments. How the only sure thing in the morning is the pocket radiation monitor called your conscience as you roll over and greet whatever it is pounding in your skull. How you’ll continue soldiering on in this fashion out of a mixture of stupidity and mutation. And however grotesque and misshapen to others you have become, its the new normal. And you’d be goddamned stupid to think otherwise.

If you reference Tarkovsky and Stalker in this mythology, we are living in the zone; the living embodiment of our dreams and desires. The crime moves in specific waves along with the magic. To navigate it requires dedication, asceticism, and courage. But I feel like it takes more than that. Objects scattered amongst the ground, discarded and divorced are sigils. Omens are everywhere. The only thing we have in the wake of destruction, death and pestilence is that which does not transcend choice but offers a clear yet optional path for those tired enough to dream it or at least hallucinate it. A flickering oasis of pixels and static that speaks in a ghost tongue through the melted feeds. A circuitry burnt memory ressurrected and devoid of time, place, space and popular opinion. A dead medium in so many senses of the word.

Sometimes I feel like I’m lying on the edge of that pool. Watching the wolves off in the distance roam the terrain with simple needs and reasons lit up in their head. Their paths are adequately marked by their decisions and actions. And easily plotted to the point where there might some day be some metaphysical application available to leverage GPS technology and black magic to navigate and fold space.

Until then I hold in high regard the invisible waves that light the path like burning ceremonial candles. And I throw the bolts across the grassy field in true Stalker fashion. Because this place is rife with traps and tricks that move from North to South in a broken arc like some lumbering shortwave radio jammer situated in the middle of the blast zone, paced in cyclic motion by feral creatures. That relic of a colder war now icy and skeletal across the planes with way more beastial in significance than anyone will give it credit. The aftershock and the half life still shadow us to this day beholden to the currency of fear.

Somewhere through the course of time, wolves made the jump from feral, pack dwelling loyalists to fierce, domesticated companions. I feel like I don’t quite understand how that fucking happened. In fact, I feel like its highly improbable being a sort of wolf in the midst of this zone myself. All I really know is its locked in the allegory of it all and I feel like it’s stupid to think it moves in defined paths.

The arcs much like that Duga sitting alone and inoperable in the midst of post nuclear trauma are broken.

To think otherwise is to dream.

Entro MC – Geuraeyo (really)

“Do you like my ass…
yes…
so whats wrong… you don’t like sex
never while i’m working…”

the 666 x repeat

“really?”

I speak up in a broken feed and set speed
and live a lifestyle hazy and amazing
its so crazy
and these days
x amount of dust and black magic
surfing on the waves of white static
like an addict
got an a twitch on my index
flex to the beat
with my gritted teeth
gnashing
a victim in the ashes
of the thrift store fascists
when the towers collapsed we got
lost in the synapse
and the sickest of raps.
from the depths of the crack smoke
lip applied gloss and it spoke
in a trail full of herpes
and a head full of coke
no joke
summoned effortless
in waves of a left hand path
added up
for the classic mathematics
tragedy around the wrist
in a tennis bracelet
i could feel it in my platelets
blood going sour
crawling on my skin
as i stand up in the shower
JUST THINKING BOUT SHIT.

Was my ex girl good for nothing?
Do I really wanna flaunt damage
when I still feel it haunting?
She can ask me questions
bout my name
and my sign
but I still remain blind
to the fact
that the impact blast
is a waste
and a taste of a half trife life
and an awkward conversation.
Anticipate the jamming of the shortwave
radio station…
I obliterate the chance for satiation.

Live from the ten percent nation
its a ten percent diss
for the ten percent listening in shock
on the block
its communion with the concrete
alley and the sewer
while my soul remain pure
like the rats
and the guns
and the hoods
and the jailhouse tats
and my crew
who live in plain sight
and plain view
and I relish in the sins
of the skin
that been rotted off my torso
and i still ain’t got no love for hoes
ne, geuraeyo (yea, really.)

http://www.entroemcee.com/entromc-keulraeyo-roughdemo.mp3