Girls Hate The State b/w Guys Also Hate The State

Oi! From South East London,

Normal flow has resumed and we are cooking with gas. Just to be clear, categorically not any kind of gas that could be used in some kind of extremely metaphorical Guy Fawkes situation. That would be crazy. Anyway!

First port of call: our debut show for Voices Radio is up online NOW to listen to. Highlights include one of the best Top of The Pops mime performances of all time, unreleased wonked-out dubs sent to Vic at an 8am afters, John Waters surf stompers and some private edits of blown-out acid insanity.

01 Midtown 120 Blues – DJ Sprinkles
02 Norwegian Drums – Doc Sleep & Delta Rain Dance
03 He’s A Liquid – John Foxx
04 Underwater - The Frogmen
05 Bavarian Rave/Construct the Structure - Perverts Again
06 Knew Noise - Section 25
07 GCCRAPTHREE 02 – NAH
08 We Jukin – DJ Manny
09 M-Power - DJ Mayhem
10 Da Da Da Ich Lieb Dich Nicht Du Liebst Mich Nicht Aha Aha Aha – Trio
11 Bad At Counting – TB–316
12 Stifler (Vanity Crystal Phallodestructo Edit) – Mike Forshaw
13 Blow Dry – No Trend

You can hear the show on our Mixcloud and Soundcloud.
Links to tracks available on Bandcamp can be found on our Buy Music Club.

We will be broadcasting live again on Voices Radio next month: Sunday 18th May at 19:00 BST. There’s a chatroom, the studio is in Kings Cross, tune in, come on down.

We’re Moving!

Speaking of new platforms: This will be the final newsletter sent using Substack, and we’ll be transferring everything across to the Buttondown platform in time for our next communiqué.

Most importantly: You don’t need to do anything on your end, and rectangle music will still land in your inbox every time we put an hour together. We just figured it was time to shift from a platform who really does seem comfortable collaborating and funding (with your premium subscription fees, no less) the worst cunts on earth, and my advocacy for More Websites has only grown with every additional lurch and capitulation from the various online networks we’ve spent over half our lives on at this point (why did you think I made all those newsletters?). Happy to encourage and assist anyone else who’s been thinking of doing the same recently.

Less Computers, or More Computers, or Computers

B: Very glad to be broadcasting somewhere live again, under the shadow of another Heatherwick mistake. I bought a DJ controller from CEX and downloaded another gigabyte of music, trying not to listen to only Three Bean Salad in the weeks leading up to showtime. A good week for the new Perverts Again record to surface, those Cleveland veterans who are still able to get you bouncing along to the misanthropy bop. In several songs, you can hear a background voice yelling at them to stop playing, which seems apt.

I also brought back out ‘M-Power’ by DJ Mayhem, a huge tune that I must admit I first heard while playing through the climax of a legendary Sonic ROM hack. Sonic 1: The Next Level by MarkyJester is pure demoscene glee, incorporating digitised techno and coding tricks to squeeze every drop from your childhood Mega Drive, and presumably why this 12” is now worth £50 on Discogs.

Speaking of platformers, I’ve been helping put together a punk videogame zine called Controller/Revolt this past month - the first issue is almost ready, and you can read more about unofficial blue rat escapades in there soon enough. Big up James and Okala; it’s going to be a riveting read.

Finally, of course Liz Pelly’s Spotify expose Mood Machine is great, a succinct dossier of a book that lays out why that company’s apparent enthusiasm for ‘democratising music’ is, and perhaps always was, a mirage. My next read is likely to be Katherine Cross’ Log Off, which I’m glad to see Good Press stocking in the UK - just give me anything that pokes into this feeling that the internet has stalled, and reasons to carry on building the foundations for alternatives and not just become resigned to the slop. She talked to Janus Rose in a recent 404 Media article I keep returning to called ‘You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism’; seems apt. Not that it’s time to delete every network, of course (I still have Facebook because that’s how I can reach my parents and/or a good plumber in the Hither Green area), but always worth reevaluating in these wobbly times. At least there’s Balatro to waste away my lunch break - I joke about being addicted to this game, but what do you expect me to look at? The news?

The Guardian, Retire Bitch

V: Hey anything else happen last week? Probably fine, right? In case you were sleeping under some sort of rock (or live in – as Judith Butler recently identified in an interview – practically any other country on earth where their second wave feminist writers don’t care about this stuff) the UK decided to legally rule I’m not a woman. I mean it wasn’t just about me specifically, but every girl likes to feel special occasionally. The official RS Political View is definitely “courts of law lmao”, but I’d be wrong to play this as on the same level as some freak’s Observer opinion column.

I often think about my friend Ailo Ribas’ writing where she compared being trans to the fish at the bottom of the ocean – just chilling while experiencing 15,000lbs per square ft of pressure at all times. I’m the grotesque glowing orb with teeth eating junk, and everything else is the problem. Coincidentally have you ever had the vegan Mango Sago at Candy Cafe in Chinatown?

I played Sprinkles, you might have clocked. Hard to get into Terre as a figure if you’re unfamiliar, as s/he offers no taster before the full course. Some of her opinions piss me off relentlessly, and some of his work I hold in the highest possible regard. Her remix of Oh, Yoko’s Seashore is maybe my favourite piece of dance music of all time. I made some badges of the cover of Midtown 120 Blues this week, which I think she would categorically hate. I once saw him DJ and it caused someone to start screaming at her and leave. Maybe that’s just what I’m drawn to in a person.

Have you ever watched any DJ interview video as hard as Give Up On Hopes and Dreams? One of the many topics it covers is people seeking immediate solution in any social criticism and how this is an example of how little we have to work with to resist. Might shock you but as a fairly broke trans person with zero investment in parliament, I’m not about crack how to stop this increasing vice crush in a Substack post. What I will recommend to take with you is something that I originally heard in one of her obscure and totally ripping Deeperama mix series compilations – Marlon Riggs’ "Tongues Untied”.

I’ve been working through Riggs’ filmography over the past two weeks. Like many gay men of the late 80s/early 90s, this is a brief and white-hot run cut far too short. “Tongues Untied” is 55 minutes long, sprawling, brutal and funny. It’s electric and captivating. I’ve been thinking a lot the past year about the formation of the social concept of “deviance” and I’d argue this is a key modern text. I could fill a notebook with the inspirations his work has been giving me. He was extremely firm about what his filmmaking was about and who it was for, and it provides no concrete answers – but it offers a rich variety of tools for everyone to take forward. There is absolutely nothing like it.

Let’s leave on this, taken from Riggs’ response to when failed Presidential hopeful and Nazi sympathiser Pat Buchanan attempted to ban the movie:

“Implicit in the much overworked rhetoric of community standards is the assumption of only one central community (patriarchal, heterosexual and usually white) and only one overarching cultural standard (ditto).”

Free the Filton 18

RIP Al Barile & Dave Allen

Ⓐ Oi! from South London Ⓔ

Repetitive Strain is free every month, both in audio and writing. However, supporting helps us along with radio fees, technical stuff, non-alcoholic beers. Feel free to throw us a little if you wish.

Free The Filton 18