The precursor to datacide is the magazine titled Alien Underground, which appeared with two issues in 1994/95. In the first issue of Alien Underground, there is a manifesto-like text signed “praxis nov. 1994” titled “Nothing Essential Happens in the Absence of Noise”. It describes “Techno” as a subversive agent that shook up cultural production, whether corporate or independent. “The industry then got the fear (…) because the principle of its organisation > the top to bottom one way transmission > got short circuited, & there was no transmitter or receiver, only a mixer & rooms full of people + noise. (…) a zone populated by savages seeking forbidden pleasures in a wasteland (…) uncontrollable and incomprehensible for teacher, cops, parents, the industry & media.” The backlash was not long to follow: “Formula were created & market research employed, documentaries were made, and laws drafted. It all needed to be brought back into the world of the spectacle, made safe for mass consumption; faces appeared, and like in a demonstration of power, talentless DJ’s were made superstars.” What we saw as raw and subversive was “streamlined for mass-brainwashing & pacification” in the form of “Nazi-Trance and Audio-Valium”. Still there was optimism: “But techno is always mutating, (…) always moving into different directions, & the time is now that transformations are under way that will lead to new places, eruptions, excess… In a situation where most of the supposedly underground parties are playing the same shit as everywhere else, where sponsorship deals + big money have moved in, a new resistance is emerging slowly>>>”.
This was also the moment when TechNET appeared. [Read more →]
The death of the undercover agent puts cops into dilemma since the murder has eliminated a chain of clues necessary to track down a syndicate that specialises in extreme terror. Charlie X is chosen by inspector Rob to take up the mission and goes undercover by posing as a “hot” gun dealer. Charlie X is introduced to Mover, the leader of the syndicate, and is put through various rigorous tests under surveillance, eventually being accepted into the gang. Attempting to break into the target workshop, MOVER and his gang are ambushed by a strong police force. Being unaware of Charlie X’s identity the police shoot him spraying his abdomen and head with a thousand bullets. In the meantime MOVER and his gang successfully blast their way out of COPTRAP filling a few brains with some hot steel. Welcome to wasteland – meet the MOVER! [Read more →]
A label portrait of Force Inc./Riot Beats/Mille Plateaux consisting of our label questionnaire (answered by Digital Hardcore in Issue 0.0), text by Achim Szepanski, and some record reviews, published in Alien Underground 0.1 in Spring 1995 [Read more →]
The powers restricting “raves” in the Criminal Justice Act are not the first authoritarian response to a dance-based culture. The association of popular dancing with sex, intoxication, and black people has made it an object of moralist suspicion at various times in history. It was the jazz dance craze which swept across much of the west that was the source of both pleasure and panic in the 1920s, as Jill Matthews told a meeting of London History Workshop (an informal group of radical historians) in November. [Read more →]
(The Morphing Culture Pt. 2)
TINFOIL LINED FOOTBALL HELMET ALIEN RADIO SIGNAL RECEIVER WORN:
by DEADLY BUDA
from Alien Underground 0.1 (1995) [Read more →]
