July 13, 2024, 3:06 p.m.
I'm Wes Streeting, and Welcome to Jackass
"Forget It, I'm In Spain" aka Repetitive Strain for July
Repetitive Strain
And HELLO to our new batch of subscribers, listeners and members of our new clandestine digital anarcho-syndicalist cell (Yvette Cooper if you read this this is a joke). Thank you for getting into this and subscribing. A few of you also paid? Truly insane people, also our people.
The election isn’t a real and no one can tell us otherwise, so let’s move on.
Repetitive Strain on Balamii • July 2024
V: Quiet on the mic this month as we had to do a bit more of a pre-record. The week we usually record our show I had selfishly decided to climb the Acropolis in 36°C heat and Ben went to Grimsby (assuming the temperature and architectural feats were the same). This one is sort of a Fluxus-style effort where I give Ben my collage parts and he put it all together while I was sipping that sweet freddo espresso nectar.
B: For this month, an attempt to stop listening to topical podcasts and get back to the noises. Hellscape are indeed one of the best of the newest brace of bands taking over London these days; Bruxism are from Bristol and have two strings to their bow - potent anarchopunk on one demo, and this absolute goblin music on the other - and I’d be thrilled to see which side emerges on stage anytime soon.
V: One of the best things about doing a radio show is pulling up a record you’ve loved for like a decade when someone involved in making it has built many new and crazy connections. I heard this Eachothers record in Baltimore in 2011! The people involved have gone on to create some of my favourite “true vibe head” music of the last five years with Geo Rip, JJ+JS, and AV Moves. Funnily enough Ben played Takako Minekawa who would later make several records with another of my favourite Baltimore sound freaks Dustin Wong, and James Massiah, who I replaced at his old job. Hoping to cash that one in so we can DJ the ICA at some point.
B: Hadn’t realised that Cibo Matto were a band who played the Bronze in Buffy the Vampire Slayer until last month, so here it is. I’m also taking proposals on how to strong arm The Estate Agents to play one more gig; the Gob Nation tribute to Stath Lets Flats that the nation requires in these Hot Wet Starmer end times.
V: I remain spellbound by The Wreckage, a completely hermetically sealed 45-minute work of plunderpsychosisswarm electronics involving a Russian non-binary person with 300+ pseudonyms and “potentially over 500” recorded works. If this is the first time you have heard Big L I do not recommend casually placing his music in your workplace Spotify shuffle. I’m gay so listening to music with rampant homophobic slurs is OK and everyone else’s problem. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
As ever, all the links for Bandcamp where they exist are up on our monthly Buy Music Club list. Full tracklist for July is:
01 Forget It, I'm In Spain - The Estate Agents 02 Aniquilalos - Escroto de Rata 03 Kitty Empire - Big Black 04 The Grave - Hellscape 05 Caspian - Eachothers 06 CP - Nídia 07 T.T.T. - Takako Minekawa 08 Devil's Son (Live in Amsterdam) - Big L 09 Bowed Grandmother - Megzbow & Vinegar Tom 10 Dissolving Parade - Sorrowing Christ 11 Charlie - James Massiah 12 Superpositional Import-Export Theory - The Wreckage 13 Your Putrid Imprisonment/Incantation of the Troll - Bruxism 14 Idziemy na skra - Siekiera 15 Rodni Grod - Moist Crevice 16 A Rain Song - Ryuichi Sakamoto 17 Sugar Water - Cibo Matto`
All our Balamii shows can be found on Mixcloud, Soundcloud or Balamii’s website.
Book Club, except it’s not Murdoch-funded (lmao)
V: Like most of my conspiracy-fried friends I regularly enjoy the Escher-style tangential riffing of the TrueAnon podcast (co-host and forthcoming hot dog-eating competition judge Brace Belden most famously worked for Maximum Rocknroll - making me and Ben colleagues, very cute - before spending 2016 on holiday). I began paying for the show to hear their episodes on the history of Germany’s Antideutsch movement, which if you’re well-adjusted enough to have never eaten completely flavourless band food in a Western German punk venue, I’m sorry that I just introduced you to this.
Two recent episodes feature writer Max Read, who made a return to break down the division between AI and AGI. I recommend the lengthy discussion in the episode around an apocalyptic Smart Dumb Guy manifesto published by Leopold Aschenbrenner, who is kind of like a smug not-cool influencer Unabomber who looks like the ghost of a Victorian plague victim. I’ve been trying to dig into the reality and potential futures of AI recently where I can find information, partially because I think people are beginning to slide into sounding like when people were scared of trains coming through the screen when cinema was invented about some of this stuff. Unfortunately, finding this info offered up by people who don’t have a blackened capitalist void in place of a soul is…uh…challenging, so Max’s work is very interesting.
More tech: Ben recently shared this Counterforce how-to on using RSS Feeds for the modern day punk. How I feel about RSS feeds is how your work colleague feels about PDFs, so I personally appreciated this.
Other less doom-based intake has included Harald Kisideu’s refreshing “European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany 1950-1975”, Jessica Higgins’ lovelorn “THEY SAID! on Julius Eastman’s Prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan d’ Arc” and Ella Villaumié’s fascinating “Hypothetical Death of The Exarchian Alpha” (yes I went to Athens). The latter weaves the radical history of the city’s under-threat anarchist square through personal notes, photography and historical typography study. Very few books about graphic design have first-hand discussion of working in a migrant centre and hearing local anarchists shoot sisu dealers in the street, or references to fallen comrade Loukanikos. Extremely lit.
On the subject of anarchism (it’s hot right now), one of my favourite periodical gifts over the last two years has been drip-intaking unhinged transgender anarchist one-sheet The Chaos Star and its ever-expanding “rose/thorn” section when it ends up in my hands. It’s available from Arthur in New York (I think? He sends it to me usually) or South London institution and host location of the annual Repetitive Strain thunderdome tournament BOOKS Peckham.
Grimsby Scene Report
B: Greetings and glad to see this latest attempt at a Meta-free punk rock life get some traction. We’re like Knut in the waves but with arguably better headgear.
My report from Grimsby is that the roads are crumbing to dust, the magnificent central library is somehow still open and so is The Matrix, a rock bar that has hosted both Sauna Youth, Antarctic Monkeys (not a typo) and my Year 11 contemporaries’ post-hardcore efforts back when you could still smoke indoors. I’m all ears of course, but I couldn’t tell you what DIY activity is happening up there in 2024 - although Lincoln has a punk scene once again (centred around the Fenland Hardcore Collective). I sincerely hope none of the leading lights of the Boston 2000s scene helped vote in Richard Tice. The election doesn’t exist.
All I have to add is that Bluesky users should shut the fuck up about the Failing New York Times. Congratulations to Spain. Peace.
Ⓐ 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.