Break, Beat
ISSUE #307
Writer’s block snuck in through the doggy door in January—I’ve found that phrase is a more palatable way to say "techno-fascist despair." The soul rots in blue light, and that’s all my cell offers anymore. Oh, I still touch grass, believe me! The last clumps those bastards burn will have to be pulled from my purple fists. But no matter how I end the night, I still wake up in our time.
Only two things get me through the workday anymore: the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers. The night I first heard The Fat of the Land, I cackled like a drunken king. When I found Dig Your Own Hole, I kissed the mirror; I had found my maniacal twin.
These two masterpiece albums, forged in Britain but influenced by Brooklyn’s Beastie Boys, established an angry, dribbling club sound that out-punked the languishing punks of the time. The genre was called big beat (sometimes breakbeat) and the draw was right there on the label—how can we make the beat even bigger? 90s electronica got to access the kind of energy that had room to blossom before the narcotic rise of palm videos. The songs in this playlist access an insect rage that suffuses the best of that troubled decade’s artists.
Gen X, like any generation, was chock full of swine and sprinkled with saviors. Think of the worst people you know: the landlords, the sadistic uncles. The X-er ones stand out as a supercharged bunch. Yet those born under that sign do, unfortunately, hold a divine power—yes, the pre-internet kind. There is nothing today that can replicate that kind of existential high. Imagine what it was like to kiss a girl back then. They had just enough information to think they had beaten history, but not enough to grasp that they had not beaten racism.
When I lock in with The Fat of the Land and Dig Your Own Hole, I can do whatever the tides of power ask me to. I can crow a bunch of bullshit for the rest of my life. I’m sharing this playlist I made for myself so you can write, code, or cook without thinking anymore—so you can work to your heart’s content.
It's rare I think anything that’s not full of vitriol or madness anymore. I know that honey catches more flies… but then what? I live with a bunch of flies? Forgive me, I’d rather die.
Writer’s block snuck in through the doggy door in January—I’ve found that phrase is a more palatable way to say "techno-fascist despair." The soul rots in blue light, and that’s all my cell offers anymore. Oh, I still touch grass, believe me! The last clumps those bastards burn will have to be pulled from my purple fists.