RICCARDO BALLI’S

FRANKENSTEIN,
1

OR THE 8 -BIT PROMETHEUS

micro-literature, hyper-mashup, Sonic Belligeranza rec. 17th anniversary
2
3
4
 5

RICCARDO BALLI’S

FRANKENSTEIN,
OR THE 8 BIT PROMETHEUS
micro-literature, hyper-mashup, Sonic Belligeranza rec. 17th anniversary
6

Frankenstein, or the 8 Bit Prometheus

micro-literature, hyper-mashup, Sonic Belligeranza records 17th anniversary
by Riccardo Balli

Volume +06 of THISCOvery CCChannel collection published by

Associação Chili Com Carne [chilicomcarne.com] + Thisco [thisco.net]

Editor: Marcos Farrajota

Cover art, illustrations; design: Rudolfo [rudolfo666.tumblr.com]

All texts not written directly into English by the author have been translated from Italian by Francesco
Fusaro, except for "How To Cure A Gabber part 1 and part 2" by Roberta Bonomi and Oliver Evans.
All texts edited by Francesco Fusaro. English revision by Charlotte Maconochie.
Proofreading by William Langstone.

Printed @ March 2018, Portugal. DL:437846/18

With the support of IPDJ [ipdj.pt], Oh Cristo webradio [ohcristo.com] + Rokko's Adventure
[rokkosadventures.at] + Tasca Mastai [FB/tascadomastai] + Distroed [distroedbigcartel.com]

Grazie mille Crack Fest (Roma), Saba, Ruido Terapêutico da Klasse

Operária, Alessandra Malvestio, Samuele Maoloni, Jucifer, O Panda Gordo
and UrbSounds.
 7

To Lina Danielli, of course,

my favourite writer!
8
 9

A forward to further experiments

from MidiEvil Bologna

1

by John Aldini (Bologna, 1762-1834)

It is with extreme pleasure that I join the party here, connect my Game Boy via
mini jack to the main mixer and celebrate with a Mega Rave jam the 17th anniversary
(2000-2017!) of Sonic Belligeranza, my record label. In fact, one of the reason why I’ve
been invited to write this preface straight outta another dimension is to explain how this
looooooong series of galvanic vinyl produced in Bologna, my home town, at the beginning
of the new millennium is an extension of my uncle Luigi Galvani’s galvanism experiments
in the 18th century. Step back, what did my uncle discover? That the muscles of all the
living animals were powered by a certain form of natural electricity that circulated
through their bodies. Both the source and the generation of this form of electricity lay
within chemical reactions, which were constantly occurring within the body. He believed
such reactions did not stop, even with death, and so it might be possible to re-stimulate
them in the moments after a body had expired and restart the muscles (even the heart!).
Yes I’m talking about bringing the dead back to life!!!
It is indeed known to history that I donated a considerable sum of money to
found a school of natural sciences for artisans in Bologna, but few are aware that I also
financed a project doomed to continue carrying out galvanic-electric-induced-shock
experiments through recordings. Its name, as already mentioned, is Sonic Belligeranza
and it has been active for 17 years to date, as this book bears witness. But now, let me
introduce myself and my activities: The English-speaking world knows me as John Aldini,
the author of An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism (Cuthell and Martin, J.
Murray, London, 1803). My name in Italian is Giovanni and I think I’m allowed to say I
contributed to making Luigi Galvani‘s discoveries more widely known. Yes, he started all
the Zombie(Mega)Rave shit by giving shock impulses mainly to frogs, and by electrifying
oxen and dogs. I tried to improve his powerful theories. I still remember after having cut
off the head of a dead dog, I made the current from a strong Nintendo battery go through
it; the mere contact triggered terrible convulsions. The jaws opened, the teeth chattered,
the eyes rolled in their sockets and if reason didn’t stop the fired imagination, one would
almost believe that the animal was alive again! I then had the courage to apply Game Boy

1
Samples from Bob Curran, Frankenstein and other Man-Made Monsters, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2014.
10

induced frenzy to humans… In January 1802 I performed an experiment on an executed

criminal in Bologna. The man had been beheaded and the experiment was only a tentative
one, but even so I appeared to get the lungs and heart to work, if only momentarily. This
fired my enthusiasm, convincing me that I was right and that I should pursue further
investigations with a fresh and whole corpse. I applied unsuccessfully to the Italian
authorities for a whole body but since in Italy criminals were executed by decapitation I
made up my mind to leave my country and conduct my “spectacles” elsewhere. Most
European nations followed Italy and used beheading as a means of execution, but there
was one country that did not: England. English law favoured hanging as the means of
executing its criminals, and this suited me admirably. So, in December 1802, I arrived in
London with the intention of bringing some of the English dead back to life. At the time,
London was the capital of medicine and science, but it was also a violent and dangerous
place. However, it was also very wealthy and a possible source of great patronage for my
proto-rave experiments. So I set about winning such patronage from the cream of London
society by a series of “diversions” and shows, just as I had back in Bologna. One of the
societies I was interested in was the Royal College of Surgeons, which included some of
the most preeminent medical men of the day. Ever the showman, I began to make my
performances more and more spectacular, dramatic and laden with mystery. One of the
most famous of my “diversions” was known as “Kissing The Electrical Venus”, in which a
young lady stood on an insulated block and was mildly charged with electrical current.
Young men then came forward to kiss her and received a gentle shock as they did so. In
some cases, even a tiny tongue of current came from her lips, which was very effective in
a darkened room. I think by then, I was drawing the crowds—and, more importantly,
interest in me and my experiments among the wealthy. But such shows were only a prelude
to my real business in London—conducting Zombie(Mega)Rave experiments that would
reanimate the dead. Besides the wealthy and influential of London society there was one
other person whom I needed to make my experiments work. That was somebody who
could supply me with a fresh corpse (or corpses) to administer Game Boy impulses to. ln
this regard I was extremely fortunate to make the acquaintance of the mysterious Mr. Pass.
Little is known about him (even his Christian name is unclear) and he remains a shadowy
and rather sinister figure. What is known is that he was the Beadle of the Royal College Of
Surgeons and he was certainly a very influential man in certain quarters. Normally a
Beadle held the rank of Parish Constable charged with charitable works on behalf of the
Church and local authorities (the word is derived from the Latin bidellus meaning
“herald”—the one who summoned the local householders together in ancient times).
However, in Hebrew, the word shammash or gabbai could be used, meaning “man of all
work” or “caretaker”, and perhaps this description more aptly fitted Mr. Pass. He was a sort
of generalized “fixer” who looked after the needs of the surgeons of the Royal College
 11

Giovanni Aldini
12

(there is even a suggestion that he might have been a failed surgeon himself, although this
is not actually certain). One of the tasks he performed was to obtain dead bodies from the
gallows, used for dissection in the training of young doctors. However, such bodies were
frequently in short supply, and under the law the number for which Mr. Pass might apply
was strictly limited—in normal circumstances, he could claim no more than three from
any one court session. It is highly probable that he dealt with men known as Resurrectionists
or “Sack-’em-ups”—bodysnatchers who looted graves and sold their contents to the
medical profession for a substantial profit. Mr. Pass may have carried out a lucrative trade
in dead bodies. The bodies the Resurrectionists acquired were of little use to me. It was
usually about two or three days before it was safe for the bodysnatchers to exhume the
corpse, and by that time a process of decay had already set in. I needed bodies that were
fresh—a few hours after death, rather than several days old. Ideally what I desired was a
corpse that had just been cut down from the gallows. I insisted that this corpse be in
healthy condition, and I instructed Mr. Pass to find me one. The Beadle did not wholly
disappoint. It appears that Mr. Pass had connections in Newgate Prison. The jail housed a
variety of inmates, from those who had found themselves in serious debt, to murderers
and highwaymen. Deaths and executions occurred there on a fairly regular basis. Most of
them, however, failed to meet my rigid specifications. In many cases they were emaciated
(prisoners were often required to pay for their own upkeep while incarcerated and many
could not afford to eat, or were riddled with the various diseases that swept through the
unsanitary jail). If this experiment was to be the success, a healthy and robust specimen
was required. Mr. Pass was able to find me one, but with one significant drawback. George
Foster (or Forster) was a journeyman coachbuilder, a skilled but lowly profession. Like
many of the teeming masses that inhabited the city of London, he and his wife Jane were
desperately poor, so poor, in fact, that they could not afford to live together but contented
themselves with seeing each other every Sunday. They had two children in the city
workhouse, another dead, and the youngest—a baby girl, named Louisa—still living with
her mother. She was desperate to keep the infant out of the workhouse, but it was proving
increasingly difficult. Jane was subject to fits of depression during which she drank, and
 13

“...and at each Game Boy startup sound a life sparkle was sent to the 8 bit frogs lower limbs”
14

the tiny family struggled. However, each Sunday, George would invariably make his way
down to the Thames, close to where Jane and Louisa lived, in order to see them and give
them what money he could. On December 6, 1802, John Atkins—a Thames boatman—
made a horrible and tragic discovery beneath the prow of his boat: The body of an infant
girl was floating in the water and had become lodged close to the riverbank. Further up,
Atkins found the drowned body of the dead child’s mother. A washerwoman who lived
close by identified them as Jane and Louisa Foster. The police were called, and on
investigation it seemed that the pair might have been murdered. Suspicion immediately
fell on Jane’s husband. The two had been seen together the previous Sunday along the
towpath close to the river, and another washerwoman claimed that she had seen them
arguing. When first questioned Foster declared his innocence, and although he admitted
seeing Jane on the previous Sunday, he stated that both she and the baby had been alive
when he’d left them. However, a number of other witnesses started to come forward
stating that they’d either seen or heard the couple arguing and Foster threatening his wife;
the case against him was starting to look bad. On December 21, George Foster was
arrested for the murder of his wife and child. Foster’s defence was rambling and
contradictory. Quite possibly a man of limited intelligence, he became easily confused
when subjected to intensive questioning. Yes, he and Jane had quarrelled over money, but
they had been on good terms when he’d left. He kept pleading his innocence but the
authorities still suspected him of murder. He was thrown into Newgate Prison to await
trial. Although the evidence against him was circumstantial, it was highly likely that he’d
be sentenced and executed. George Foster fitted my specifications perfectly. He was a
young man in his prime, and years of building the bodywork of coaches had made him
exceptionally fit and muscular. His outdoor work had made him healthy and his body
looked to be in perfect shape. There was only one problem: he hadn’t been sentenced to
death yet. I had to wait. In the meantime, I redoubled my efforts in attracting wealthy
London sponsors. I ran ever more dramatic spectaculars in the city’s salons and frequented
the clubs where the cream of society hung out. One of those clubs that I courted was the
Royal Humane Society—a group that represented the pinnacle of medical, scientific, and
social influence. If I could win the backing of that society, then there would be no limit to
what I might achieve in London. I also approached the Maritime Office of the Royal Navy
with a startling proposition. At the time, England was engaged in a war with France, a war
in which the main theatre of conflict was the ocean. A number of sea battles had been
fought with a significant loss of life due to drowning. My proposition was that if drowned
bodies could be recovered, I could stimulate them with galvanic electricity from my Game
Boy and, through pocket Zombie(Mega)Rave power, bring them back to life. They could
then return to war as belligerents. It sounded like the mythical Cauldron of Goibu in
Celtic legend. The Navy was intrigued and showed at least a passing interest. I was certainly
 15

the talk of London at the time and was provoking

intense speculation about the possible success of
my 8-bit experiments. But apart from distracting
the upper echelons of London society, I needed
to keep George Foster in good shape if he was to
complete my most fantastic experiment, and this
task was entrusted to Mr. Pass. Each day, the
Beadle would visit Newgate Prison, bringing
food and drink to the prisoner as he awaited his
trial. Things were not looking good for the
journeyman coachbuilder; although there was
no hard evidence to connect him with the deaths
of his wife and child, the police were still building
up a case against him based largely on hearsay
and speculation, which they planned to take to
court. If found guilty he would certainly hang.
And there was something else—something that terrified George Foster beyond words.
The Murder Act passed by the English Parliament in 1754 held one other horror for the
condemned: the threat of dissection. The bodies of criminals who had been convicted of
murder were liable, at the discretion of the Court (and it was seldom refused), to have
their bodies cut up for surgical investigation—usually for demonstrations conducted by
the city’s medical colleges. George Foster was a religious man. He believed that if his body
were dissected, he would be refused entry into Heaven in the Final Judgment when the
dead are raised, intact and whole, to stand before God. If his body were to be cut into a
hundred pieces—as he assumed would be the case—then he could never hope to reach
Paradise and see Jane or Louisa again. It was here that Mr. Pass stepped in. If Foster were
to sign his body over to me as a next of kin, I would ensure that it would not fall foul of the
anatomist’s knife. Even so, there was no guarantee that he would be spared anatomization
even if he signed. This was enshrined in law, but it gave me a useful lever to use if the
execution took place. But the case against George Foster was weak and relied on dubious
evidence, some of which was blatantly manufactured by the police. For example, one of
the chief witnesses against Foster was Sarah Daniels, a 9-year-old girl who had been
friendly with Jane Foster and who had been traumatized by her death. She claimed to have
heard the argument between Jane and her husband and the threats that were issued. When
she was taken to identify Foster, the police told her that she was “going to see the murderer”,
and so when Foster appeared in the dock at his trial, she identified him as such. Foster did
little more than declare his innocence. He had stayed with Jane on the Saturday night and
they had gone for a walk the next day when they had argued over money. But he left her
16

“Square wave death transmitted through Game Boy Link cable. Once comunication is established life BLEEEEEEP!”

at 3 p.m. and had gone to see his two other children in the Whetstone Workhouse before
going home. (He would later contradict this, saying that he had set out for Whetstone but
had turned back to head home due to the failing light before he actually got to the
workhouse.) He had not murdered her, he insisted, but he didn’t provide an alibi for
himself. In Newgate, Foster sank into a deep melancholy and Mr. Pass was dispatched to
reassure him that things were not as bad as they seemed, to keep his spirits up, and most
of all to encourage him to eat and to stay healthy. On January 12, 1803, George Foster
appeared in court. If the case against him was weak, his own defence was even weaker,
relying simply on character witnesses. His lack of an alibi was repeatedly drawn to the
jury’s attention, and although he said he had been in Whetstone around the time of Jane
and Louisa’s death, he brought nobody forward to corroborate this. Public opinion had
turned against him—it was not only the murder of his wife of which he was accused, but
also the murder of an infant, which in everybody’s eyes was a hideous crime. Under the
direction of the judge, the jury arrived at their verdict. George Foster was guilty of murder
on all counts. The judge did not delay in pronouncing the sentence. Foster was to be
 17

hanged by the neck until dead. I had my experimental specimen.

Although Foster’s body had been signed over to me, I was still not sure that it
would escape the anatomist’s knife. I dispatched Mr. Pass to bribe the Newgate authorities
to deliver the corpse into his hands at the Royal College of Surgeons shortly after the
hanging. In the meantime, Foster sank deeper into despair and was now subject to fits
of grief and rage during which he became almost uncontrollable. It was during one of
these fits that he attempted to take his own life, using some sharp instrument that he
had somehow procured. This was not uncommon among many condemned prisoners in
Newgate—after all, they had nothing to lose and it was an attempt to take control of their
own fate. Foster’s attempt seems to have been fairly serious and it was enough to bring Mr.
Pass hurrying to the prison to revive him. The execution date had been set for three days
after the trial, and it was essential that Foster be kept alive and in good physical condition
for the experiment that would take place directly after. The prisoner now refused to eat
and was growing steadily weaker. Mr. Pass had to attempt to force-feed him as he lay in his
cell in order to keep some sort of strength up—a malnourished corpse was no use to me.
In fact, on the morning of his execution (January 16, 1803), he was so weak that he had to
be carried from his cell by two warders and helped up the steps of the scaffold, which he
“was unable to mount”. Before the hanging, Foster is said to have made a full confession to
the murder of his wife and child. Again this was not uncommon among the condemned,
and in Foster’s case there is some question as to whether such a confession was actually
made or not. The execution was carried out quite speedily, with Mr. Pass standing by;
however, the body was ordered to hang for at least an hour to ensure that Foster was
dead; Mr. Pass waited anxiously nearby. While Foster was being hanged, I was preparing
a gloomy basement room in the Royal College of Surgeons for the supreme experiment of
my career. I had set up a bank of galvanic batteries and connection equipment throughout
the low chamber and had even tested the Game Boy electrodes I planned to use. I had
invited some of the most prominent men in London—including representatives of the
medical profession and from the Navy—to see my “proto-rave revitalization experiment”.
Everything had to be right and the experiment had to be successful. On January 17, 1803,
my audience assembled. Foster’s body was brought in by Mr. Pass and was laid out on a
slab in the middle of the galvanic batteries, which were now fully charged. I placed the
electrodes coming from my Game Boy on the temples of the corpse and induced a mild
electrical flow. The fingers of the dead man moved in response and the eyes flickered open,
revealing fixed pupils. This, of course, was just a prelude, and, still playing the showman,
I now moved to the main part of the Zombie(Mega)Rave experiment. One electrode was
attached to Foster’s temple, another was placed in his rectum, and the number of BPM
was increased. The corpse jumped and arched its back; the face grimaced horribly as the
muscles contracted. More rapid arpeggios were administered. It is difficult to convey the
18

Commodore 64 sound chip pulsing audio Death all over Game Body shell case.
“An account of the late improvements in galvanism with a series of curious experiments performed
on dead gabba ravers bodies in the anatomical theatres of London” by John Aldini

tension that filled the room, which was lit only by candlelight and oil lamps. The audience
must have wondered if the thing in front of them might do more than arch its back or flex
its fingers; might it rise from the slab and rave among them? I poured more buzzing square
wave bass into it and the corpse moved and thrashed. Then suddenly, as if in response to
the flood of noisy gated percussions, the chest rose and fell as if the dead man was taking
a breath. This was what I was waiting for, and I motioned the audience closer, although
few did so. However, there was no second breath and the body lay motionless under
their gaze. In a frenzy now, I pumped more galvanic electricity into the body, making it
thrash and move, but already the lungs were starting to deflate and there was no further
response. The audience could see that the experiment was a failure and were already
starting to drift away. I begged them to wait, but they were already gone; Mr. Pass and
me were alone in the basement chamber with Foster’s dead body. In an unutterable rage,
I wrecked the equipment that I’d so painstakingly set up, pulling the galvanic batteries to
the floor and snapping all the connections to my Game Boy. Then, after telling Mr. Pass to
clean up, I left. The next morning Mr. Pass was found dead in the basement room. To this
 19

Inserting cartridge in vital organs: if transplant works fine, it sparks beep beep on the top.
“An account of the late improvements in galvanism with a series of curious experiments performed
on dead gabba ravers bodies in the anatomical theatres of London” by John Aldini

day, his death remains unexplained, although official records state that he “died of fright”
most probably from a seizure. Significantly, George Foster’s body, which was still on the
slab, had been moved (or, some speculated, had moved itself). What had happened? Who
had killed the enigmatic Mr. Pass? The main consensus is that the process Mr. Pass had
witnessed—the galvanization of Foster’s body—had so frightened Mr. Pass that it had
brought on a fatal seizure. But there were also those who believed that perhaps the body
of George Foster had risen briefly from its slab and had terrified the Beadle, bringing on
the seizure. Could it be, they asked, that my Zombie(Mega)Rave experiment had actually
worked? Had the corpse then fallen back? Of course, this is simply gruesome speculation.
There was one final tragic twist in George Foster’s story. Several days after he’d
been hanged, two women approached a London clergyman with new evidence in the
case. They knew Jane Foster very well and stated that during her fits of depression, she had
frequently said that she would “make away with herself ”. She had also said that she would
take the infant girl with her as “she could not bear to be parted from her”. They attested
that on the morning before she had met her husband, Jane had been in a particularly
20

Refreshing Game Boy session. Soon start up sound is going to blep havoc again.
“An account of the late improvements in galvanism with a series of curious experiments performed
on dead gabba ravers bodies in the anatomical theatres of London” by John Aldini

depressed state concerning money. It seems possible, therefore, that while in a disturbed
state of mind, Jane Foster took her own life as well as that of her baby daughter, and
that George was indeed innocent of their murders. The information, of course, came
too late to save him, but it is eminently possible that had it been known earlier it would
have spared Jane’s husband the hangman’s noose and denied me my specimen. I then left
London defeated and went to France, where I tried to ingratiate myself with members
of the French National Institute, without much success. Finally, I returned to Bologna.
Although the actual experiment had been a failure, I was successful in one respect: I had
London both talking about and interested in galvanic electricity and its possibilities. And
it brought the idea of re-stimulation of life together with the resurrection of the dead very
much to the fore. My theories, which circulated in both London and Europe in 1804 and
1805, generated something of a “buzz” with its radical ideas. And Mary Shelley would,
of course, have been acutely aware of such discussions and the ideas that they entailed.
A stream of thinkers and writers came to her father’s (the famous philosopher William
Godwin!) house to debate and query many of the day’s ideological and scientific theories,
 21

and there is little doubt that debates about the 8-bit Zombie(Mega)Rave would have been
among them. That live Game Boy-core session in that gloomy basement of the Royal
College of Surgeons was indeed one of the inspirations behind the notorious Frankenstein
novel! In honour of my work I was awarded the Order of the Iron Crown and made a
councillor of Milan by the Emperor of Austria. I remained in Milan until the death of my
human body in 1834, leaving quite a substantial fortune behind. And now here I am, back
through a Game Boy séance—yes, by placing 9 Game Boy units in a hexagram shape,
each connected to the other via a Game Boy link, and pressing play on all of them at the
same time I can be brought back to life! As I stated in my previously mentioned book
An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism, the circumstances in which I had
attempted to resurrect Foster were to blame for the failure of the experiment: The body
was not completely intact by virtue of the attempted suicide, it was malnourished, and
the situation was not conducive to success, even for the greatest scientist of my time. So
now, no longer in flesh and blood but in the form of an electric impulse, I again try my
experiment with Game Boy-induced shocks. Following are the reports of 17 tests from the
[Zombie(Mega)Rave] dancefloor you just can’t miss!!!!

Giovanni/John Aldini, Bologna, January 2017

22
 23

Author‘s Introduction
2

As a child I scribbled music on my Gold Game Boy, and my favourite tunes during
the hours given to me for recreation were “Poing” by Rotterdam Termination Source,
“Amsterdam waar lech dat dan?” by Euromasters and “James Brown is Still Alive” by Holy
Noise. Still, I had a dearer pleasure than this which was to play Hawaiian traditional music
on that retro device—the chimes at 147 BPM on slack-key guitar melting just perfectly
with the beeps from my NanoLoop—the ukulele on the early gabber hoover inspiring
the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My kick drums were harder and
tougher than the one I sampled from. I was a close imitator—preferring to do as others
had done before with my 8-bit attitude than putting down the suggestions coming out
of my own mind. What I wrote was intended to be a parallel of the MICRO in micro
music but applied to literature. So, LSDj, Nintendo, Commodore 64 and so on, playing
not classical music, or black metal but those old dusty volumes sitting on the shelf!
I mainly lived and passed a considerable amount of time in the Bolognoise. I
made occasional visits to more “swinging” European capitals (London, Berlin, Vienna...),
but my habitual residence was in the MidiEvil area delimited by the 666 portico arches
up to the Sanctuary of Madonna of San Luca, downtown in Bologna’s historical centre.
Lo-fi grim and frostbitten I call this place in retrospect; it was not so then. It was an
eyry of freedom, and a pleasant region where, unheeded, I could play my harsh bass
drum kicks. It was by sampling local mazurka, or the male only acrobatic dance called
crouched polka Bolognese, that most of my tunes were born and fostered.
I busied myself: to think of a story, one which would speak to the mysterious
fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look
around, to curdle the blood, and vigorously quicken the beating of the heart to above
the 300 BPM threshold! I felt that blank incapacity of invention which is the greatest
misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. “Have you
thought of a story?” I made a ladder out of Spectrum, Vic20, Intellivision, Amiga, Sega
and reached for those books up on the shelf, upstairs: Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, Zang Tumb
Tumb by Marinetti and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, yes The Modern Prometheus, as its
subtitle reads, it’s just perfect for being nano-technologised! Invention, it must be humbly
admitted, does not consist in creating out of a void, but out of chaos; first, the materials
must be afforded: it can give square form to dark, shapeless soundwaves, but cannot
2
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin, 1992, pp. 5, 7 and 8-10.
24

bring into being the 1-bit soundwave itself. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing
on the capabilities of a subject and rendering it 8-bit: and in the power of moulding
and fashioning ideas that make you shoot rainbows out of your ass. The nature of the
principle of life: a piece of Vermicelli preserved inside a NES (Nintendo Entertainment
System), till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion. Not
thus, after all, would life be given. Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism
had give token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a hyper-mashup might
be manufactured in bedroom studios, brought together and imbued with vital chip-
tune warmth. Viking reggae, black metal kuduro, psych-tango, chip-tune country,
tropical yodel, concrete rockabilly and all other possible Sonic Frankensteins could
be reanimated by electro-impulse from my Gold Game Boy, patented by the physicist
Giovanni Aldini himself. This notable Bolognese was the nephew of Luigi Galvani, the
man who discovered that a dead frog’s legs could be made to kick with the application of
a spark. As an enthusiastic proponent of his uncle’s scientific researches, he performed
spectacular experiments on the heads and trunks of cows, horses, sheep and dogs. A
local eyewitness in Bologna reported: “Aldini, after having cut off the head of a dog,
makes the current of a strong battery go through it: the mere contact triggers really
terrible convulsions. The teeth chatter. The eyes roll in their sockets; and if reason did
not stop the fired imagination, one would almost believe that the animal is suffering and
alive again”. At the beginning of the 19th century Aldini extended his work to human
bodies, when he began receiving the first bunch of freshly decapitated criminal corpses
from the Bolognese Council. These corpses were delivered to an apartment used for
the experiments located in the neighbourhood the executions took place in. The heads
were first subjected to the Galvanic action using three troughs, each containing forty
plates of zinc, and as many of copper. Having moistened the inside of the ears with
saltwater, he formed an arc with two metallic wires, which, proceeding from the two
ears, were applied, one to the top and the other to the bottom of the pile. When a circuit
connection was established, he observed strong contractions in the muscles of the face,
which were contorted in so irregular a manner that they resulted in the most horrid
grimaces. The action of the eyelids was exceedingly striking, though less sensible in the
human head than in that of an ox. He then hooked the corpses up to rudimentary Neo
Geo batteries that provided the necessary spark to cause the muscles to contract and
relax. By touching various muscles, he was able to get the body to do some fascinating
things, such as raising its arm and clenching and unclenching its fists. The legs were
made to kick, the face was made to tremble, the jaw to shudder, and he even managed
to get one eye to open. Aldini travelled all over Europe publicly electrifying human and
animal bodies, and his performances were extraordinary theatrical spectacles, in many
respects he was a showman. In order to perform these experiments on a body that had
 25

not been decapitated, he went to England since that was the nearest country to Italy in
which execution by hanging, without removal of the head, was the legal practice. So in
1803, Aldini gave a public performance at The Royal College of Surgeons in Newgate,
London, using his Game Boy/batteries on the body of the executed criminal George
Foster. Quite a few of those who watched the experiment thought that he was reviving
the body, bringing it back to life, had the blood of the cadaver not been drained and its
spinal cord severed. Mr. Pass, the Beadle of the Surgeons’ Company, was so alarmed that
he died of fright soon after his return home. Mary Shelley, who was only five then, didn’t
witness the experiment, but rumours of it are supposed to have massively influenced
her when writing her classic novel. More than 200 years later, those galvanic electro-
impulses sent from Aldini’s NanoLoop are also responsible for the conception of other
Sonic Frankensteins like Hakim Beyoncé, Sean Paul Sartre, Tom Tom of Finland and
the sonic human centipede Boy George Michael Jackson 5 (up to you to go on adding
a “pes” to reach number 100 of this repellent audio insect!). I listened—with bleeding
ears, my brain fucked up—I listened to raw, unpredictable speedcore assassinations
put together with Capoeira; I listened to the hideous megamix played loud from a
Spectrum, it showed cheesy melodic jingles, its gastric bass somehow had the power
to set the body in motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the
effect of any human endeavour to mock the Programmable Sound Generator used in
vintage computers, consoles and arcade machines. His success would terrify the artist;
he would flee from his newly-created record label horror-stricken. He would hope that,
left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade, ceasing
to produce mongoloid sounds in every conceivable style; that this thing, which had
received such imperfect animation would subside into dead matter, no more releasing
albums of ethereal music and then yet another HC batucada record; and the artist
might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient
existence of the hideous hyper-mashup which he had looked upon as the next big thing
in terms of electronic dance music genre. He sleeps, but he is awakened; he opens his
eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside opening the curtains and looking on
him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.
I opened mine as I heard some terror, hardcore beats. The idea so possessed
my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wish to exchange the putrid image
of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still: the soundproofed room, LSDj, the
micro monitor of the studio. I could not easily get rid of my vomiting megamix; still it
haunted me. I must think of something else.
I had thought of a story. Accompanying it with tunes from my Gold Game
Boy, I began that day with the words: “It was on a dreary night of November”, making
only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream. And now, once again, I bid
26

my hideous progeny—now it had a name, Sonic Belligeranza records from shithole

Bologna, just like that Giovanni Aldini weirdo!—to go forth and prosper.
I will add but no word as to the alterations I have made to my classic
book first published in 1818. They are principally those of style. I have changed no
portion of the story nor introduced new ideas or circumstances. I have only added,
interspersed with the narratives, a non-fiction description of my Sonic Frankenstein
called Sonic Belligeranza. Everything goes with this hyper-mashup music label
o’mine: don’t ask me about future releases, because the electro-impulses of our old
Bolognese fellow citizen of two centuries ago foster new life forms into it (and its
sublabels, -Belligeranza and +Belligeranza) at every step.
Sonic Belligeranza in this recycled fiction is the ominous anal yoghurt
creature, and it is the generator of the widest breed of Sonic Frankensteins in non-
fiction. In these latter parts, I have also discussed general label influences: gabber,
breakcore, chopped and screw, horrorcore, zombie rave. And, of course, retro gaming
culture. The influence of this as already expressed earlier was a crucial factor for the
fiction part that has, ultimately, to be considered a “low resolution literary remix” of
the M. Shelley classic, Frankenstein or The Modern 8-bit Prometheus. Only its original
length has been drastically compressed, its language exposed to clashing and meshing
with micro music jargon, its plot simplified to intuitive basics as in an arcade video
game, leaving the core and substance of the story untouched. Now you can plug this
Micro-fiction directly into the slot cartridge of your Game Boy BEEEEEEEEEP!

Riccardo Balli, Bologna july 2016.

 27

Letter I
To Mr. Fusaro, London
St. Petersburgh. Dec. 11th, 17-

You will rejoice to hear that no nerf has accompanied the commencement of
a playthrough, which you have regarded with such evil dpm (damage per minute). I
arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my bros of my bonus stage, and
increasing confidence in the sense of my auto-aim.
I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh I
feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me
with delight. Do you understand this buff? This breeze, which has travelled from the
region towards which I am advancing, gives me a dynamic game difficulty balancing
from those icy climes. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and
desolation; it ever present to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There,
Francesco, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing
a perpetual splendour. There, snow and frost are banished, and, sailing over a calm sea,
we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto
discovered on the habitable globe. What may not be expected in a country of eternal
light? I may discover there the wondrous power that attracts the turntable’s needle; I
shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited,
and tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. What shall I bestow upon
all of mankind, to the last generation, through the discovery of a passage near the pole?
Through the reaching of a place that, at present, requires so many months journeying?
Or, by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which—if that is even possible—can only
be effected by an endless mode such as mine?

These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and
I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to level editor; for nothing
contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as an aimbot—a point on which the soul
may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition was the favourite dream of my early years.
In my youth I read with ardour former KLF Bill Drummond’s account of his trip to the
Pole. Bad Wisdom: The Lighthouse at the Top of the World is the title of his book written
together with Mark Manning from Zodiac Mindwarp and is the story of their setting
out, in the winter of 1992, to plant a statue of Elvis Presley at the top of the world,

3
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin, 1992, pp. 13-16, and samples from Bill Drummond and Mark Manning, Bad
Wisdom: The Lighthouse at the Top of World, London: Penguin, 1999.
28

to spread cosmic love along the world’s lay lines. Those passages of beautiful prosaic
descriptions of the countryside and customs of the places they pass through, which
then turn into ultra violent fantasies generally involving sex with lesbian school girls/
vampires/nuns/Gestapo guards and lots of defecation, drinking, ejaculation and violent
insertions, were my study day and night. Indeed, as my familiarity with the book grew,
I decided to set out on my own “Glory Seeking” expedition: I would take a holy and
sacred picture of MC PavaRotten to the very summit of the earth; once there, I would
place it with sincere reverence amongst the chimerical shimmering palaces of ice and
snow and then (accompanied by some weird Zen magic) I would light joss sticks, dance
about making screechy kung fu noises, get off my face, and that would be it: Planet
Earth saved. Simple. All enemies pwnd.

My speedrun is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirit is often depressed.

I am about to proceed on a long and difficult level, the emergencies of which will
demand all my hit points: I am required not only to raise the spirits of other newbies, but
sometimes to sustain my power creep, when the noobs are failing.

This is the most favourable period for pixel hunting in Russia. They fly quickly over
the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable
than that of an English stagecoach. The fog of war is not excessive, if you are wearing 8-bit
Cardboard—a retro virtual reality pair of glasses which I have already adopted.
I do not intend to sail until June, and when shall I return? Ah, dear brother,
how can I answer that question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will
pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.

Farewell my bro Francesco. Infinite health/life shower down blessings on

you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and
kindness.

Your affectionate brother,

Riccardo Balli
 29

Letter II
To Mr. Fusaro, London
Archangel, March 28th, 17-

How slowly DoT (Damage over Time) passes here, encompassed as I am by

frost and snow! Yet a second step is taken towards my mission. I have hired a D-pad, and
am occupied in collecting multiple-players; those whom I have already engaged, appear
to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed of God Mode.

But I have one want, which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the
absence of the object of which I now feel is the most severe evil knockback. I have no
Game Boy Pocket Extreme Green, Francesco, with a lighting mod on; if I am assailed
by disappointment, no retro device will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall
commit my soaring flute-like melodies to my mobile phone it is true, but that is an
emulator for sound’s transmission. I desire the real Game Boy audio, buzzing square
wave bass, rapid arpeggios and noisy gated percussion.

You may deem my 8-bit fetishism nostalgic, my dear bros, but I bitterly feel
the want of that Game Boy. I have no flashing screen, detailed yet wide, with green
backlight, to approve or amend bleeps. How would such a sound-toy report the bugs
of your poor brother’s LSDj! I am a geek: for the first fourteen years of my life I played
tons of Pokémon games, and did nothing but try to catch them all! At that age, when I
became acquainted with the Start, Select, Dpad, Button A and Button B on the plastic
case, I perceived the necessity to make sounds with it. Now I am twenty-eight and am
in reality more illiterate than many chip-tune fellows. It is true that being able to use
both sequencers of 8-bit music production (LSDj and NanoLoop), my tunes became
so catchy and upbeat, that made people want to fly a supersonic jet through mountains
of icy fire and then make the jet transform into a space shuttle and rocket into space
at the speed of light and then explode into a plethora of rainbows and antimatter stars
that would collide with other stars and teleport me to an infinite number of parallel
universes. But now I need a step forward. I need a Game Boy Pocket Extreme Green, able
to create earthquakes through 2 Pulse Wave Generator.

Yet do not suppose, because I complain a little, or because I can conceive a

consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am wavering in my playthroughs.
4
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 17-20.
30

Those are fixed, fixed as fate, and my quest is only delayed until the weather shall permit
my embarkation. The winter has been dreadfully severe, but the spring promises well,
and will, it seems, come remarkably early; so that perhaps I may sail sooner than I
expected. I shall do nothing rashly; you know me sufficiently to confide in my sandbox
and matchmaking whenever the safety of others is committed to my care.
I cannot describe to you the feeling of nostalgia when I hear the beepity-boopity
noise of those tunes. It is impossible to communicate the artificiality of those sounds
based on square and triangle waves. The actual shape of that audio is geometrically
distinct from any sound that could be generated naturally. There’s something at work
in my soul, which I do not understand. I am practically industrious—painstaking; a
workman to execute with perseverance and labour: but besides this, there is a love for
outdated and obsolete technology, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out
of the common pathways of music production to create original tunes that deliberately
sound like a video game from 1989, even though the music was not associated with any
actual video game besides the sonic nostalgia.

But, to return to my dearer considerations. Shall I meet you again after having
traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape of Africa or America?
I dare not to expect such success, yet I cannot bear to look at the reverse of the picture.
Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters
on some occasions when I need them most to support my cooldown. I love you very
tenderly. Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.

Your affectionate brother,

Riccardo Balli
 31

Letter III
To Mr. Fusaro, London
July 7th, 17-

My Dear Brother,

I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe in Warp Zone 3 (Hawaiian
scenario)—and well advanced in my voyage. This letter will reach England by a
merchantman of Tiki Game Boy on their homeward voyage from Waikiki; more
fortunate than I, who may not see my native level perhaps for many years. I am, however,
perked up; my men are bullet hell, and apparently firm of Auto-aim, nor do the floating
of low res Humuhumunukunukuapua fishes that continually pass us, indicating the
dangers of the regions towards which we are advancing, appear to make gimps out
of them. We have already reached the latitude category:_video_game_set_in_Hawaii.
8-bit pineapple-pillaging caterpillars everywhere like in Nancy Drew: the Creature of
Kapu Cave. It is the height of the summer, although not as warm as in Pokémon Sun
and Moon, southern breezes from sandy beaches blow us at the speed of Test Drive
Unlimited 1 & 2 towards palm tree-lined shores, amazing volcanoes which I so ardently
desire to attain.

No incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a decent Shoot ‘em up
video game such as Urban Strike. One or two knock-back, or a senior level of difficulty,
are accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record; and I shall be
well content if nothing worse happens to us during our voyage.

But win quote shall crown my endeavours. Wherefore not? Thus far I have
gone, tracing a saved game over the pathless seas: the very stars themselves bear
witness and are testimony to my God Mod. Why not still proceed over the untamed
yet obedient element? What can stop the determined
aimbot and resolved will of man? My swelling heart
involuntarily pours itself out thus. But I must kill
screen. Heaven bless my beloved brother!

R. B.
5
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 21-22.
32

Letter IV
To Mr. Fusaro, London
August 5th, 17-

So strange an accident has happened to us that I cannot forbear typing it on

Tasword on my Spectrum, although it is very probable that you will see me before these
papers can come into your possession.

Last Monday (July 31st) we were surrounded by ice, which closed the
ship in on all sides, scarcely leaving her the sea room in which she floated. Our
situation was similar to the frozen stage of Cool. Cool Mountain of Super Mario 64
and dangerous, especially as we were surrounded by very thick fog as in The Elders
Scrolls V—Skyrim. We lay to, hoping that some change would take place in the
atmosphere and weather. Frozen tundras, slippery slopes and ice-coated platforms
constituted the nearby scenario, one in which you had to worry about maintaining
body heat and avoid freezing to death more than slipping off the edge of ice-cubes.
About two o’clock, as if after the epic climb up the seven thousands steps
to High Hrothgar and the Throat of the World, the mist cleared away, and we
beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which
seemed to have no end, just like the view of the near-endless acres of snow, fields
and canyons from the mountain of Skyrim. The frozen stage we were playing in
tended to offer a sense of isolation that really puts the focus on the sailors/characters
I was controlling at the time. In fact some of my comrades groaned, and my own
mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts regarding the next bonus
level, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention, and diverted our
solicitude for our own RTS (Real-time Strategy). We perceived a low carriage, fixed
on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a
mile; a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat
in the sledge, and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveller
with our telefrag until he was lost in a fierce blizzard where it was hard to keep track
of directions and the destination.

This QTE (Quick Time Event) excited our lagged wonder. We were, as
we believed our localization, many hundreds of miles from any land; but this
apparition seemed to denote it was not, in reality, as distant as we had supposed
6
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 23-30.
 33

in our Sim (Simulation game). Shut in, however, by the ice, it was impossible to
follow his track, which we had observed with the greatest attention.
About two hours after this occurrence we heard the ground sea; and before
night the ice broke, and freed our ship. We, however, lay until the morning, fearing
an encounter in the dark with those large, loose masses which float about after the
breaking up of the ice, as in Nitrome’s video game/app Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage.
In the morning, however, as soon as it was light, I went on platform game
and found all the sailors in attract mode on one side of the vessel, apparently talking
to someone in the sea. It was, in fact, a sledge, like the one from Sled Storm we
had seen before, which had drifted towards us in the night on a large fragment
of ice. Only one Koromaru dog remained alive; but there was a human bot within
it, who the sailors were persuading to connect via Bluetooth. He was not as the
other traveller seemed to be, a virus-generated inhabitant of some undiscovered
M.M.O.G. (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), but an AAA game. When I appeared
on platform, the master said, “Here is our captain, and he will not allow you to
perish in the expansion pack”.

On perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in English, although with a

foreign accent. “Before I jump on the platform”, said he, “will you have the kindness to
inform me whither you’re bound.”
You may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed to
me from a bot on the brink of destruction and to whom I should have supposed that my
vessel would have been a power-up which he would not have exchanged for the most
precious Easter Eggs the heart can afford. I replied, however, that we were on a voyage of
discovery towards the northern pole.

Upon hearing this he appeared cel-shaded, and consented to jump on the

platform. Good god! Francesco, if you had seen the bot who thus capitulated for his
safety, your survival horror would have been boundless. His limbs were nearly frozen,
and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and fatality. I never saw a bot in such a
cheated death. We attempted to carry him into the cabin, but as soon as he had quit
the fresh air, he DCed. We brought him back to the platform, and hotfixed him with
brandy, forcing him to swallow a small quantity. As soon as he respawned, we wrapped
him up in blankets and placed him near the kitchen stove chimney. By slow degrees
he recovered, and ate a little soup which Opped him wonderfully. Two days passed
in this manner before he was able to speak, and I often feared that his sufferings had
deprived him of his CPU. When he had in some measure respawned, I removed him
to my own Abandonware, and attended on him as much as my duty would permit. I
34

never saw a more interesting IP; his eyes have generally an expression of wildness,
and even madness, but there are moments when, if any one performs an act of
kindness towards him or does him the most trifling service, his whole resolution
lights up, as it were with a beam of sprite or polygons that I never saw equalled. But
he is generally nerf or unbuff, and sometimes he gnashes his teeth, as if impatient
with the weight of woes that oppress him.

When my guest was a little hotfixed, I had great trouble keeping the men away,
who wished to ask him a thousand questions, but I would not allow him to be tormented
by their idle curiosity in a state of slow-down. Once, however, the lieutenant asked why
he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a vehicle? His countenance instantly
assumed a mod of the deepest gloom, and he replied, “To seek #OneWhoFledFromMe.”
“And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fashion?”
“#Yes”
“I fancy we have seen him, for the day before we picked you up, we saw some
dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice.”
This aroused a flame thread, and he asked a multitude of questions in his own
140 characters concerning the route which the daemon, as he called him, had taken.
Soon after, when he was alone with me, he said “I have, doubtless, excited your curiosity,
as well as that of #TheseGoodPeople; but you’re too considerate to make enquiries.”
“Certainly; it would be very impertinent and inhuman of me to trouble you
with any inquisitiveness of mine.”
“And yet you #rescued me from a strange a perilous situation: you have
benevolently #respawned me.”
Soon after this he enquired if I thought that the breaking up of the ice had
destroyed the other sledge. I replied that I could not answer with any degree of
certainty, for the ice had not broken until near midnight, and the traveller might have
arrived at some pre-rendered graphics before that time; but of this I could not judge.

From this time a new turbo animated the decaying frame of the stranger.
He manifested the greatest eagerness to be upon platform, to watch for the sledge
which had appeared before, but I have persuaded him to remain charging in the
cabin, for he is far too weak to sustain the rawness of the atmosphere. I promised
that someone would watch for him and give him instant notice if any new object
should appear in sight.

Such is my journal relating to that strange occurrence up to the present day.

The stranger has gradually improved in biofeedback game, but is very silent, and appears
 35

uneasy as if he was a demo when anyone, except myself, enters the cabin. Yet his manners
are so conciliating and gentle that the sailors are all interested in him, although they
have had very little communication with him. For my own part, I begin to love him
as I love my Game Boy Extreme Green; and his constant and deep DM (DeathMatch)
fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been an AAA class game in his
better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable.

I said in one of my letters, my dear Francesco, that I should find no Game Boy
in the ocean; yet, I have found this bot who, before his spirit had been broken by misery,
I would have been happy to have possessed as the Game Boy of my heart.

I shall continue my journal concerning the stranger, should I have any fresh
incidents to record.

August 13th, 17-

My affection for my flicker increases every day. He excites at once my

admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so boss a creature
destroyed by cheats, without feeling the most poignant grief? He is so game
genie, yet so tactical: his CPU is so downwardly compatible, and when he speaks,
although his words are smart bombs, yet they flow with 140 character rapidity and
unparalleled eloquence.

He is now much respawned from his shovelware, and is continually on the

platform, apparently watching for the sledge that preceded his own. Yet, although
unhappy, he is not so utterly occupied by his own fatality but interests himself
deeply in the missions of others. He has frequently conversed with me about mine,
which I have communicated to him without disguise. He entered all my sandboxes
obligingly, in favour of my eventual success, and into every detail of the difficulty
switches I had taken to secure it. I was easily led by the sympathy which he evinced,
to use the language of that game overlay, to give utterance to the rapid-fire ardour
of my soul; and to say, with all the fervour that warmed me, how gladly I would
sacrifice my frame-rate, my double-jump, my anti-aliasing, to the furtherance of my
quest. One character’s health potion or permadeath is but a small price to pay for the
acquirement of knowledge which I sought for the OP that I should then transmit to
the elemental mobs of our race.

As I spoke, a dark gloom spread over my listener’s countenance. At first I

perceived that he was trying to suppress his emotion; he placed his hands before
36

his eyes, and my voice quivered and failed me as I beheld tears trickling fast from
between his fingers—a groan burst from his heaving breast. I paused; at length he
spoke, in 140 character sentences—”Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have
you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me—retweet—let me reveal my tale,
and you will dash the cup from your lips!”
Such words, you may imagine strongly excited my curiosity; but the paroxysm
of grief that had seized the stranger overcame his weakened powers, and many hours of
repose and tranquil conversation were necessary to restore his autosave.

Having conquered the violence of his feelings he appeared to despise himself

for being the slave of MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game),
and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again into conversation about
me, myself. He asked the history of my earlier years. The tale was quickly told, but it
awakened various trains of reflection. I spoke of my desire to find a Game Boy Pocket
Extreme Green—of my thirst for more intimate empathy with a fellow retro device
than I had ever experienced with my Game Boy Link; and expressed my conviction
that a Game Boy, who did not enjoy this connection, could boost little pogo.
“I agree with you,” replied the bot stranger, “we play unfashioned creatures,
but half hack, if one sounds wiser, better, dearer than our own—such a Game Boy
limited edition ought to be—do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty
low-res natures. I once had a Game Boy Gold, the most noble of the limited editions,
and am entitled therefore to judge the various series. You have hope, and the world
before you, and no cause for roguelike. But I—I’m AFK (Away from Keyboard) and
cannot begin life anew.”
Even 2.5D resolution as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does
the beauties of chiptune. The soaring flute-like melodies, buzzing square wave
bass, rapid arpeggios and noisy gated percussion seems still to have the power
of elevating his soul from earth. Such a bot has a double existence: he may
suffer aggro and be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet, when he has devices
connected via Game Boy Link, he will be like a celestial spirit, that has pixelated
a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or UP.

Will you smile at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine wanderer?
You would not, if you checked his tunes. You have been tutored and refined by books
and retirement from the world, and you’re somewhat fastidious; but this only renders
you all the more fit to appreciate the extraordinary bleeps of this wonderful bot.
Sometimes I have endeavoured to discover what bit rate it is he possesses, that elevates
him so immeasurably above any other sound I have ever heard. Of course I believe it
 37

to be 8-bit; a quick but never-failing power of two AA disposable batteries which allows
for up to 20 hours of playing time; a penetration into vintage chic sounds, unequalled
for clearness and precision; add to this his, 140 characters, facility of expression, and
a vocoder voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music.

August 19th, 17-

Yesterday the bot said to me, “You may easily perceive, Captain Balli, that I
have suffered great and unparalleled griefers. I had determined, at one time, that the
memory of these evils should die with my CPU, but you have won me to alter my
determination. You seek for God Mode, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the
gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent that stings you, as mine has been.
I do not know if the relation of my teabaggings will be useful to you; yet, when I
reflect that you are pursuing the same First Person Shooter, exposing yourself to the
same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce
an apt moral from my game; one that may direct you if you succeed in your quest,
and console you in case of fail. Prepare to hear from my FMCDH of occurrences
which are usually deemed marvellous. Were we among the tamer scenes of nature, I
might fear encountering your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule, but many things will
appear possible in these abandon warez, which would provoke the laughter of those
unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of nature—nor can I doubt but that my
browser-based game conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events
of which it is composed.”

You may easily imagine that I was much gratified by the offered
communication, yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by a recital
of his fatality. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised arcade narrative,
partly from curiosity, and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his beta test,
as if it were in my power. I expressed these feelings in my answer.
“I thank you,” he replied, “for your isometric view, but it is useless; my
tempting fate is nearly fulfilled. I wait but for one track ball, and then I shall repose in
peace. I understand your feeling,” continued he, perceiving that I wished to interrupt
him; “but you are mistaken, my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you; nothing
can alter my bullet hell, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined.”
He then told me, that he would commence his arcade narrative the next day,
when I should be at leisure. This difficulty switch drew from me the warmest thanks.
I have resolved every night, when I am not imperatively occupied by my multi-tap, to
record, as closely as possible in his own words, the video game plot he related during
38

the day. If I should be engaged, I will at least make notes on my Tasword. This .doc
file will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure free from Twitter limitations as you
will see I’ve put it: but to me, who knows him and who hears it from his own 140
characters—with what interest and sympathy shall I play it some future day! Even
now, as I open my Tasword, his vocoder voice swells in my ears; his lustrous Twitter
avatar and background image dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; I see
this thin animation gif attached to his last tweet, while the lineaments of his account
default graphics are irradiated by the CPU within. Strange and harrowing must be
his arcade story, frightful the kill’em all mod which embraced the gallant vessel on its
course and wrecked it—thus!
 39

1.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr7

I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva, at the Villa

Diodati rented by Lord Byronanism with JohnPusRancidori and my future husband
PervyBisexShelley. The season was cold and rainy and after the customary séance, in
the evenings we crowded around a pair of Technics1200 and amused ourselves with
absurd hyper mashups of whatever vinyl happened to fall into our hands. We used to
mix everything together, from Hawaiian music to gabber, and these Sonic Monsters,
together with the gloomy atmosphere of the villa, excited in us a playful desire
for freestyling. Thus we started to rap over the top of the aforementioned mutant
juxtapositions, until Lord Byronanism, surely seized by an abusive and blasphemous
euphoria, suggested a slam poetry competition on the most sickening sonic wretch!
I suddenly had a premonition about the inevitable tragedy waiting for our wicked
company, retaliation for our explosive and irrepressible coprolalia. Sure enough, Lord
Byronanism would die during a Teknival in Greece; my beloved PervyBisexShelley
would drown during a House music-flavoured Pool Party and JohnPusRancidori
would commit suicide after publishing his notorious Vampire Freestyles in 1819.
Before dying violently myself, I, MaryEvilwinShelley, intended to transcribe the sonic
wretch that came out of that decisive night. My memories were vague and almost lost
in my lysergic and precarious mind, so I found an odd way to bring my recollection
to life: I stood like a human lightning rod on the roof of the Villa Diodati on a stormy
night; the visceral Sound Blob I had created started to flow in my body again, like
pouring rain in irregular lightning. So here are 17 hyper mashups that might prove
suitable to spark life into a new human breed... The #8bit Prometheus!

7
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 12 + samples from Ken Russel, Gothic, Virgin Vision, 1986.
40

HOW TO CURE A GABBER

PT.1
Such crude exhibitionism, machismo and warmongering spirit is, at the
end of the day, absolutely consistent with the tender affection of the bear: the more
ferocious it appears on the outside, the more sweet and squishy it is on the inside (at
least in relation to the other members of the Thunderdome gang). This is actually
the root of the term gabber (pronounced gabba), which comes from Dutch slang for
“mate”, “geezer” or even better, “oaf ”—a big friendly giant who is a little bit stupid.
On the subject of stupidity, I believe that idiocy for its own sake is the cornerstone
of every subculture, since idiocy creates a rupture within the dominant culture. All
these rituals typically performed by people who belong, ideologically, to a certain
scene or subculture employ an element of tribal stupidity (the punk moshpit, the
hardcore stage-dive, the metal headbang, to name a few). But at the same time these
rituals represent fantastic, revolutionary possibilities. Gabber, with its international
hakken dance and the specifically Italian phenomenon of the hardcore warrior human
pyramid, has granted humanity with some of the most distinctive and exceptional
idiots that any counterculture can recall.
The hardcore warriors are a stylistic variation (still dancing to 180 BPM!)
that emerged exclusively in Italy, distinguished by crazy-coloured mohawks instead
of shaven heads, by cyber apparel such as studded collars, fluorescent leggings,
flashy tight tank-tops and face paint, colliding, even physically, with the gabber
mother-culture. The human pyramid is specifically their ritual. It started at the end
of the night in Sala 2, a room originally dedicated to metal, at Number One, a club
in Cortefranca (Brescia).
After the locals had converted to techno, the heavy metal moshpit continued
and by 2000 the ritual had transformed into a human tangle in which hardcore warriors
clambered on top of each other to construct a monolith: the first to climb to the top
of the pyramid and touch the ceiling was crowned emperor of the gabber kingdom.
The gabber dance, called “hakken”, is characterized by a series of rapid movements
and jittery leg kicks to the pulse of the speakers, which can reach up to speeds of 190
BPM. The origin of this dance is unknown. Possibly, it is a distorted version of the
dancing performed in The Prodigy’s Out of Space, whilst the name might come from
the slogan “hakkûh!”, coined by one of the pioneers of the genre, Dark Raver. In this
dance, the moves hit every beat in quick succession, without cease; arms and hips are
 41

Gabber Pyramid. Photo Credit: Number One (2014).

42

less important and respond to other musical elements.

Hardly anything has been written, said or debated about gabber, especially
in Italy. However, in Holland, the birthplace of this phenomenon, they even have
a weekly radio show dedicated to it called Hakkuuuh!?! on the network TMF, the
Dutch version of MTV. Yet outside of the Netherlands gabber has been snubbed for
its superficiality and machismo. The latter, undoubtedly essential components of this
nihilistic subcultural movement which has no ideological vision other than Lonsdale
sweatshirts, Australian tracksuits, Nike classics and extreme facial piercings. But let’s
be clear: the gabber look is truly beyond fashion, not because it is beautiful or ugly,
but because it shows a synthetic posthuman aesthetic that looks even more extreme
on women. In fact, watching a cute teenage girl with a platinum-blonde spiky fringe,
fluorescent yellow zip-up BSA hoodie, furry woollen leg warmers on her ankles
and purple Buffalos, goose-stepping on the dancefloor at 200 BPM while making a
Nazi salute is undoubtedly weird. But this has little to do with politics, at least in the
traditional sense. Fascism, if exposed (and this is not something you can take for
granted, as someone might think when talking about hardcore techno), is exemplified
by dance moves and behaviour in the same way that a new piercing between the
eyeballs is exhibited. What remains is an immense ignorance (and this is where the
subject becomes political) as a result of post-industrial alienation which reveals,
especially in their spare time, aspects of total phallocentric control by the market.
Radical hedonistic apathy and a no-future mindset encapsulate the movement, meaning
that there’s a real risk that someone might kick the bucket during Global Hardcore
Nation from too much reckless pill-taking.
The first wave of gabber rose from the ashes of hard house, in the early
nineties, in Rotterdam, around The Hague and partially in Amsterdam, from a
sound inspired by hedonistic elements, distinguished by a 4/4 tempo at 140 BPM
with melodic contrapuntal synth-leads accompanied by soul vocal samples, in
which their only purpose was to find the most effective form of entertainment.
Such simplicity was certainly used by the Nazis to let their ideology take root, as
Wilhelm Reich observed, highlighting simplicity as one of Nazism’s main features:
“Speeches in National Socialist meetings were indeed characterized by very clever
manipulations of the emotions of the mass individuals and by strict avoidance of
objective argumentation” (1946: 28). Similarly, the gabber of Neophyte or Paul
Elstak was churned out for the superficial hedonism of the Dutch crowds in
the 1980s and 1990s, a mecca of illegality (prostitution, free drugs etc.) and, of
course, avoided any kind of complex or experimental sonic reasoning. Sticking
with this comparison, the indissoluble bond between blood and the dancefloor is
the indispensable precondition for the life of the gabber nation. 4/4 at 180 BPM is
 43

an inalienable hereditary right of the Thunderdome rural lineage. And we could

continue down this road of dystopian analogy, but this will leave us with nothing
more than the intellectual pleasure of hyperbolic comparison, an exaggerated
provocation for its own sake—just like the warmongering and xenophobic posturing
of the gabbers. Pointless to pigeonhole them with something other than a generic
youthful deviance fuelled by the ignorance and apathy of a Eurotechnocentric
banlieue. At the end of the day, some seminal producers of the genre are black, like
the previously mentioned Dark Raver, not to mention the English DJ Loftgroover.
Sticking to the realm of speedcore, there is also a German project active from 1993
called ANC (Anti Nazi Core) and the techno hardcore label, Mokum, famous for
the slogan: HARDCORE UNITED AGAINST RACISM AND FASCISM.
The list could go on, but I think
that’s enough to dispel the stereotype.
Certainly there are some militant neo-
fascists. But who knows the self-declared
Dutch National Socialist Panzerfaust? Has
anyone heard the spineless anthems White
Revolution 2009/Whitecore 2009, Radical
Islam Plague of the World or Aryan Techno,
in which the usual bumbum beat is cut
with vintage recordings of Nazi hierarchs?
Originality is not the driving force even
in Ah ah ah de Antifa or in his vindictive
comeback Gabber United Against Antifa.
Hardcore United, from Mokum 12” sleeve. This is music of staggering banality, not
Photo credit: Mokum (1997) known in the gabber scene.
Returning to our history, gabber, springing from the hedonistic sound of
the phallocentric market, has since faced, particularly in the city of Rotterdam with
producers like Sperminator and Euromasters, a process of lumpenproletarianization,
much like oi! in the punk scene. Eliminate the melodic synth lines and certain
hardcore vocalisms and you’re left with frenetic beats at 190 BPM, recalling the
alienating repetition of machines on an assembly line. According to the Australian
label-owner Mark Newlands from the legendary Bloody Fist Records: “In Newcastle
most of the people involved there are related to someone who works in industry or
something like that, maybe that a subconscious effect on their material” (Datacide
Magazine 1997). Techno hardcore, topped up with urban noise, industrial sounds
and dark atmospherics, also carves out a sonic profile of revolutionary agitprop,
becoming a soundtrack for the most deviant underclasses of Europe and Australia.
44

But beware: if the accusations of Nazism make little sense, the same applies to the
sound’s possible militant components. A gabber mohawk, spiked or dyed, will never
be comparable to a traditional punk mohawk: the gabber mohawk is in fact nothing
more than a gadget, like a Fred Perry shirt. They have no ideological connotations.
In a tragically indifferent sense it is simply a decoration, full stop. If I had referred
earlier to how weird it is to see a little 17-year-old gabber chick working on her
hakken dance, it is no less frustrating to see the hallmark of another subculture, like
the Mohawk, on a hardcore warrior cracking out the Thunderdome dance at high
velocity, without pause, kicking every beat!
This is pure gabber-emptied-of-content, under the banner of a hedonism for
sale at a mega rave merch stall. In this sense, the contribution of labels like Hangar
Liquides Records and Praxis Records or artists like Ilsa Gold and Laurent Ho should
be considered as an experimental virus in the vast sea of techno hardcore, a more
engagé incarnation of the genre. I realize that I am leading into types of music, such
as speedcore, fleshcore and extratone, which have developed identities of their own.

Hardcore Warrior. Photo Credit: Number One (2014)

 45

2.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr8

I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time, and exchanged
the discoveries of recent producers for the dreams of the forgotten Old School Amiga
Motherfukka. Besides, I had contempt for the uses of modern Electronic Dance Music.
It was very different when the Masters Of Hardcore sought immortality and power;
such views, although futile, were grand; but now the scene had changed. One by one
the various keys of the Casiotone, which formed the mechanism of my being, were
touched. Chord after chord of my Guitar Hero were sounded, and soon my mind was
filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. Whence, I often asked myself, did
the principle of hardcore proceed? I saw how in 8-bit music the fine waveform of a tune
was degraded and wasted into Sine, Saw, Square and Triangle soundwaves; I beheld file
corruption that led to blooming frequencies of music; I saw how white noise inherited
the supposed wonders of the ears. I paused, examining and analysing all the sonic
minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from music to noise, and noise
to music, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden strobe light broke in upon
me—a light so brilliant and irregular, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of
the prospect, I was surprised that among many men of genius who had directed their
enquiries towards the same sonic science, that I alone should discover so astonishing
a musical secret. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in
discovering a little computer Chip that could process 8 Bits Of Information at a time.
Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, to prepare a megamix with all
its beatmixing, beatjuggling, and scratching remained a work of inconceivable difficulty
and labour. The materials within my command at present were hardly adequate for so
arduous an undertaking: using only 4 channels of sound, two of which devoted to treble
voices, one to bass, and the sole purpose of the fourth being to make gritty sounding
noises. As in micro music the minuteness of the tunes was a great hindrance to my
speed.

8
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 46-47 and 50-52.
46

HOW TO CURE A GABBER

PT.2
Let’s return instead to gabber and its nihilists, stubborn followers and social
deviants who should not be ghettoized or labelled with any ideological definition,
but critically discussed and re-territorialised from the inside. I have played at gabber/
industrial events (the boundary between the two is often blurred in Italy) in which
my hyperkinetic breaks and distorted frequencies were enthusiastically welcomed
by the shaven heads with wild moshpits or compliments like: “Nice one mate,
TUUUUUUUNNNNE!” Such pure ignorance has much subversive potential. Maybe it’s
a matter of adapting it to the right channel. If dancing by the decks there is a 4/4 “Duce”
freaking out to speedcore beats, instead of following Antifa orthodoxy and smashing
his head by default, another revolutionary strategy can be considered: find an extreme
music connection with him in order to subvert his mind. The alleged gabber-fascism
in Italy is, in fact, a chauvinistic behaviour disorder, a symptom of gang ignorance and
late-capitalist alienation. It can be treated as a psychopathology on the dancefloor. Help
them redirect their transgressive energies into the right channel, look them in the eye, as
close as their eyebrow piercings, and whisper into their ears words that might reawaken
their critical faculties. Our task is to develop paradoxical rhythmic strategies of music
therapy that will puncture their arrogant security, as well as free the gabber imaginary
from the prisons of Lonsdale, Australian tracksuits etc. In reality, I am not sure if such
a cure is possible on such a grand scale, allopathically confronting melodic synth lines
with post-industrial distortion or hard house vocal samples with samples from extreme
films and so on. The “audio cure” can only be divisive, contagious and homeopathic.
Divisive: the physician should actually experiment with his curative models of behaviour
on himself first. He should not enter into an oppositional game. In practice this means
completely absorbing himself into the gabber sonic universe, getting through the
complete discography of Marc Acardipane aka PCP from Frankfurt, through to the UK
hardcore of the Deathchant rec. rooster, the happy hardcore of Scooter, distinguished
by his lyrics that are beyond insanity, and the Japanese gabber by DJ Sharpnel, in order
to decode the audio dynamics of the Thunderdome brain. Contagious in the sense of
being able to modify other cells through imitation and not imposition. Transferring
this to music would mean implanting the virus through listening to a variety of extreme
genres from speedcore to breakcore, in order to propagate the infection within the
gabber organism.
 47

Break It Up
The beat has to be broken up as much as possible: we must create an alchemy
of rhythm and a backbeat that favours hyperkinetic, multi¬directional movements.
Developing this paradoxical motor technique will make it easier to question the
dogma and intellectual sclerosis consolidated by many years of 4/4 beats and 180 BPM.
The gabber engaged in hakken footwork will wreck the floor hampered by breaks,
maintaining balance by establishing a schizo-motor state, as if taken by a sudden
epileptic seizure. Eventually, after this necessary exercise, the detoxified gabber will
enjoy black Africa and broken beats!

Produce Gastric Bass

Bass is gastroenterological music. It speaks directly to the intestine, duodenum,
pancreas, colon and rectum. The digestive system is in fact most receptive to bass cut-
off frequencies that churn through the stomach like a cyst. The gabber, after the first
inevitable oesophageal reaction to an unconventional bass line, will start to appreciate
its succulent flow and wobble until he discards his perennial constipation medication
and no longer expels bass from his arse.

Add White, Pink, Brown, Grey and Purple Noise

As a novice watercolourist, the gabber in a beret, palette in one hand, brush
in the other, will, blowing on his vuvuzela, paint still life images: industrial landscapes,
garbage dumps and mutants. Deftly applying a little bit of grey (noise) and then a bit
of pink (noise) will bring a bit of industrial chromatic sensitivity to the canvas-track.
Departing from the black and white of 4/4 kicks will help him discover a whole new
world in which white (noise), brown (noise) and purple (noise) are the protagonists.

Distort the Frequencies

We have already discussed the synaesthetic affects of music and how through
the use of a wide range of possible frequencies you can create feelings that move beyond
the audible and arrive at the tactile.
With certain high-pitched synth lines from the most extreme drum’n’bass,
these dynamics become imperceptible. Sounds get beneath the skin. Hearing no
longer perceives these high-pitches so that sound makes the skin listen. You feel those
goosebumps as it gets cold. The music is actually cold, since the skin has lowered its
temperature by at least one degree due to the radical distortion of the frequencies.

Velocity
Time in music is radically different from time in the late-capitalist metropolis,
48

which consumes everyday life. Musical duration is only measurable in terms of

sensibility, tension and emotion. As noted for the first time by Benjamin, the attempt to
blow up the continuum of history is a typical revolutionary act: every revolution begins
with a transformation of time. During the French Revolution, when night fell on the
first day of battle, the revolutionaries independently shot all the clocks of the bell towers
across Paris simultaneously.

Use Subversive Sampling

The intelligence of the gabber must be tested through complex concepts,
like sonic déjà vu. This term refers to a sonorous experience of memoire involontaire.
It involves enriching tracks with samples that are buried in the collective-media-
consciousness, which, once awake, like Zombies on the march, begin to operate the
gabber brain, (previously) inactive from too many chemicals. Of particular use might
be old TV jingles or theme songs we’ve heard hundreds of times that won’t leave us
alone until we can identify them: audio-Proustian madeleines that open up worlds
through involuntary memory.

Create Sound Blobs

Through mixing the most absurd genres we can instil a serious identity
crisis in the gabber, who will end up with an ineluctable emancipatory schizo-rhythm
against all the psychopathological problems of the subject. It’s always him, the hardcore
warrior, storming the middle of the dancefloor with the rage that only a shaven skull
can provide. When you first overlay the usual BUM BUM BUM in the beatmix and
cut it with the melody of a Hawaiian ukulele, recalling a dreamy maritime Eden with
flower necklaces, there he is: the moshing tiki-gabber. This is only a clinical example
of the fracturing of the musical-behavioural brainframe. We might also mention other
medical literature on the subject, such as the famous afro-ebm, a rather simplified drum
machine which contaminates industrial rhythms with intricate percussive sounds from
the black continent, and so on, forever, breaking the water-tight compartments of
psycho-musical genres.
 49

3.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr9

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishments of

my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments
of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay in
front of my 66 mm screen. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally
against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, I saw a sinister message
on the screen: the Game Boy was on, powered by its battery, the signal coming and
going. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe? At first what I was hearing
could have been described as work of genius, but the progressive rock interpretation
of the famous “Super Mario Bros. Theme” played by late-1990s band the Minibosses,
painfully disclosed the sonic wretch I had endeavoured to form: a revolting creature it
was, presenting itself like a traditional rock band, called The Advantage, with electric
guitars and acoustic drums, but playing covers of themes from NES and C64 games.
The technical apparatus and resulting sound of the chiptune was divorced from
its composition-body. Using conventional instrumentation groups like Press Play
On Tape offered fans of rock music the opportunity to experience computer game
music within a familiar aesthetic framework, though hiding the most sinister Sound
Frankenstein elements.
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human
nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life
into an 8-bit composition exclusively based on other people’s music. For this I had
deprived myself of rest and health. I had lifted every music sample I could find: but
now that my hyper mashup was sitting in my Game Boy, I just could not listen to it.
I rushed out of my bedroom studio and continued traversing my hallway for a long
time. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I went
back to the studio and threw myself on the bed, lying next to my Game Boy. I slept,
indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest music dreams: porn-grindcore remixes of
Neapolitan pop singers!

8
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 56 + samples from Kevin Driscoll and Joshua
Diaz, Endless loop: A brief History of Chiptune, Tranformative Works and Culture: Massachusetts, 2009.
50

MASHUP vs HYPER-MASHUP

LEBENSBORN
Mashups are created through music contrasts, absurd juxtapositions, political
(in)correctness, hyperboles—the free association of ideas. When I think about this
hyper-music fathered in a lab, what comes to my mind is the repugnant Nazi eugenics
brought to Scandinavia by the Third Reich. With the term Lebensborn we refer to the
German organisation created in 1935 by Heinrich Himmler with the goal of securing
racial purity through the birth of children of pure Aryan descent. The programme
was also implemented outside Germany, particularly in Norway, due to the physical
features—blue eyes, blonde hair—of the local population that were deemed suitable to
the improvement of the Aryan race. The Third Reich gave assistance to children born to
Norwegian women that were fathered by German soldiers: mothers received economic
support and children could be sent to special institutions to receive food, medical
assistance and a (Nazi) education. During WWII, something like 350,000 Nazi soldiers
occupied Norway. Many of them fathered children with local women: apparently, the
number of German offspring born in Norway between 1940 and 1945 is between 10,000
and 12,000. Half of them were brought up in the special Nazi nursery homes as part of
the Lebensborn programme.
The most famous of these Lebensborn children is probably Anni-Fird “Frida”
Lyngstad, the brunette from ABBA who sang with a sugared voice despite her bitter life
experience. Now that you know this, try to play Fernando or Mamma Mia (in which
Frida’s voice stands out for its pleasantness) and tell me they don’t sound pretty twisted
all of a sudden... But carrying on with my controversial association of ideas, I would say
that the plunderphonics technique causes a similar modification in the genes of pop
music: It warps its first goals (i.e. a numbing pursuit of turbo-capitalistic hedonism) in
order to create something different, something literally bastardised (“bastard pop” is
another term to refer to the genre). This new creature, the offspring of the most eclectic
sound plagiarism, is fathered as a mocking means to subvert both the predictability of
mainstream music and the strict mentality of some austere clubbers.
I think that the best results can really lead to some hilarious cultural short
circuits. Others just aim to provide entertainment on the dancefloor and don’t possess
any traces of humour whatsoever. There are even some cut-ups that bring a brisk sense
of terror during a DJ set by using snippets of horror films and creepy news, but in the
end they tend to induce sardonic laughter, rather than fear.
 51

Some people are quite sceptical about the real power of cultural and political
subversion that the crossover technique entails: “The use of sampling in recent pop
music should come as no surprise. What is supposed to be an ironic take on the original
material tends on the opposite to strengthen the music industry. It’s a desperate attempt to
commercial success, to get noticed and accepted by the mainstream” (Christoph Fringeli,
Praxis Newsletter n. 18, 2005). I personally believe that at the present time there is no
more “music industry” as such (at least in the form that Fringeli had in mind while writing
his bulletin), though I definitely agree with the fact that there are a few audio-collages
that could be dubbed as subversive and I’d refer to these as hyper-mashup. To be fair, the
number of these latter transgressive Sound Frankensteins started to dwindle as soon as
the mashup itself was consolidated as a music genre for MTV prime time.
52

4.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr10

I quit my seat and walked on, although the darkness and storm increased
with every minute and the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. It echoed
through Salêve, in the Juras and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled
my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an
instant everything seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself from the
preceding flash. The storm, as is often the case in Switzerland, appeared at once in
various parts of the heavens. The most violent storm hung exactly north of the town,
over the part of the lake which lies between the promontory of Belrive and the village
of Copêt. Another storm enlightened Jura with faint flashes, and another darkened
and sometimes disclosed the Môle, a peaked mountain to the east of the lake. While
I watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This
noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; as I proceeded, I perceived a rhythmic echo
of a Roland 808, with a sluggish snare drum on the third beat, a rich bass line and
melodramatic synth stabs. The whole music pattern was interspersed with a plump
kick drum pumping up beyond 180 BPM: Gabber-trap, Super-trap, Supertramp, the
latter a band that ought to be brought before the courts for crimes against humanity.
The vocal parts of “The Logical Song” pitched to hyperkinetic speed as they fire the
obnoxious chorus (Now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical | Liberal,
fanatical, criminal. | Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re | Acceptable,
respectable, presentable, a vegetable!) over an endless cumshot of trashy sax solos,
Fausto Papetti-style. I stood fixed, listening intently. I could not be mistaken; the
deformity of the music instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy sonic
daemon to whom I had given life. I remained motionless. The thunder ceased, but
the rain still continued, and the scene was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness. I
replayed in my mind the events which I had, until now, sought to forget: the whole
train of my progress towards my cursed music creation, the first mixdown into my
Game Boy, its eventual running via Bluetooth.

10
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 73-74.
 53

SKATE/AKTION N. 23
WIENER SPAZIERGANG 2015
“I consider skateboarding an art form, a lifestyle and a sport. ‘Aktionismus’ would
be the least offensive categorization”
Tony Hawk (Remixed)

I really hope there isn’t any Jugendstil board around. We know that the
entrepreneurs pulling the strings of the skateboard market around the world are always
keen to jump on any possible trend in order to sell new merch to their loyal niches,
but I’m not ready for a California-meets-Central Europe mashup yet. When the harsh
Vienna winter kicks in in Nieder Osterreich (the administrative area of the city),
consuming sweets and keeping your glucose levels high up seems like a healthy, if not a
reasonable, choice. That’s probably why my mind was so keen to mull over the elegant
Konditorei I was passing by as I rolled towards Vienna’s 1st Bezirk (district) that day.
Their frescoed ceilings were the perfect scenario for dozens of hot chocolates topped
with whipped cream, natürlich paired up with slices of Sachertorte with some Schlag on
the side as well. Try it out once to see the hallucinogenic effects of that glycemic bomb...
baby. Hey, a Sachertorte-style skateboard, that’s something reeeally kitsch for sure! An
Austro-Hungarian souvenir, to be skated with a pair of white socks and Birkenstocks,
German-style! As I was skating the 1st Bezirk, I tried to retrace the path of the famous
Wiener Spaziergang by performance artist Günther Brus. In 1965 Brus, one of the
founders of Viennese Actionism, walked down the 1st Bezirk with a black line drawn all
the way down his white-painted body. I was skating a brand new board dripping white
paint. Needless to say, it had a black line crossing it from nose to tail under its trucks.
My shoes were pretty bedraggled, of course.
Vienna is one of the most meteoropathic cities I’ve ever been to: depending
on the weather, its population pours down its streets, U-Bahn and Bim (Vienna’s tram
system) with more or less lively expressions on their faces. As I said, that day was pretty
cold, but the sunlight was ricocheting around the gold inlays of the white buildings of
the 1st Bezirk, so you could say that the Viennese were in good spirits after all. I was
feeling like one of them, me and my dripping skateboard... I had hastily studied the
route of my Skate Aktion the night before on my stupid phone, thanks to a community-
based website called viennaskatespots.wordpress.com run by Austrian skaters. You can
54

find dozens of skateable spots and some skate parks on it, but those systems based on
Google Maps aren’t always up-to-date. I knew I should have tried to improvise a bit,
depending on what I would find during my psychogeographic creed on wheels. I
wasn’t even sure about Günther Brus’ own path, as I only remembered some of those
historical photos that are now part of contemporary art criticism, like the one where
he’s getting out of his Volkswagen to start off his Spaziergang. I mean, the journey
was just an excuse to allow enough room for my personal dérive, to leave everything
as sketchy as possible. Weren’t the riders of Situationism a bit tipsy, if not semi-
conscious, when walking around Paris and Amsterdam with their walkie-talkies? At
that point, I was totally into that parallel: Guy Debord = Tony Hawk, Asger Jorn =
Stacy Peralta, Raoul Vaneigem = Rodney Mullen, and so on with that Situationism-
meets-skateboarding mashup. Urban art forms like skateboarding, parkour, graffiti,
etc. suggest a different approach to the city and its rules, in a way that sounds similar
to what psychogeography was suggesting in the 1960s.
I was now in the famous Heldenplatz where Adolf Hitler announced the
Anschluss of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938. I decided to walk, rather than skate,
until I had reached the equestrian statue of Archduke Charles. As soon as I got there,
I started to push mongo on my board. I was feeling giddy, to say the least. Such an
unnatural way of skating that is! Yep, pretty mongoloid, as the expression suggests. I
wasn’t caring much about the tourists staring awkwardly at me, and after that warm-up
I started to push with my “right” foot until I took my board on one hand and jumped
on the marble of the statue. Its base was large and squared, and I had some nice space
for a run-up and do some manuals. The surface was highly polished, just perfect for
skating. I can’t stand for very long on a manual, 6 seconds max, maybe 6 seconds and
66 milliseconds. I left the statue and rolled freely around the Platz. A Nazi-flavoured
wind was rushing through, and I was enjoying making some noise with my power-
slides on the asphalt: the only music I was listening to in that period. I was feeling fully
charged with my Jugend skateboard! I rolled over to the series of four flights of steps
on Heldenplatz, too high to ollie on them at the first attempt. I had to try it out 23 times
before getting on the first flight! The rest of it was pure massacre: I didn’t have enough
space for a run-up before an ollie. If an ollie is a motion to God, well, I wasn’t really
getting closer to Him that day! I had to leap over on foot, board in hand. Once on top,
I jumped on the board and rolled to the Burgtor, until I got into the Spanish Riding
School, a stunning building and an icon of the 1st Bezirk. A training session was taking
place, and you can imagine the horses neighing as I was shuffling through them on the
floor of a building that could well be a World Heritage Site! Noisier than my manuals
and wheelies with the Archduke!
I couldn’t but gallop out of it, and get back to my Spaziergang. The second
 55

Vienna Skate spots map!

stopover was on Dorotheergasse, to the luxurious Palais Dorotheum, which is also the HQ
of a society of art collectors of the same name. An important auction for some Biedermeier
chair was on that day, and I managed to dodge a long queue of rich ladies by the skin of
their fake teeth. In a matter of minutes, I reached Stephansplatz and a series of perfect
ledges. The only problem was the amount of tourists around, so I had to wait until a little
Spanish family left some room for my next run-up. The flooring wasn’t that polished, and
as soon as I tried to grind my board, it didn’t catch up and flipped under my bum. Yep,
a classic assknife! Stephansplatz is definitely worth a second try by night: too central, too
crowded. After this clumsy attempt, I decided to keep going and rolled out until I reached
Bräunerstraße/Stallburggasse. That was when I heard someone yelling “Polizei, Polizei!” I
stopped, knowing that my Skate-Aktion Wiener Spaziergang was over.
56

5.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr11

“When mi reflect, fi mi cousin”, said my Rastafarian relative Sista Elizabeth,

“on di miserable release of dat book by Nicolas Nova, “8-bit reggae”, mi no longer see
Babylon and its politricks as dem before did appear to mi. Before, mi did look upon di
accounts of chiptune musicians such as Unicorn Kid or Nullsleep, mi read in books or
hear from others as tales of ancient video game days or imaginary tech-evils; at least
dem were remote and more familiar to reason dan to di imagina-tion; but now 8-bit
reggae has come home, and Rastafarians appear to mi as monsters thirsting for each
other’s consoles. Yet mi a certainly injust. Everybody did believe di record label Jahtari
to be guilty, and if dem could have committed di music crime for which ravers and
Rastas suffer alike, Jahtari would have been di most depraved of record companies. For
the sake of a few albums, to have mixed together di cheap sounds of Game Boy and
Commodore 64 and di uphill sound of reggae! Mi could not consent to any mashup,
but certainly mi should ha thought such a music creature unfit to remain inna music
market. But deh are even music forums and Facebook pages on 8-bit reggae!” I was
listening to this discourse with the most extreme agony, and not just because of the
objectionable mixture of upper-class English and Jamaican patwa. I, not in deed, but in
effect, was the true music sicko! For I had fathered a sonic wretch that was beyond the
wickedness of such musicians as Jody Bigfoot, Lego Sounds and Helgeland 8-bit Squad.
But she clearly could not read my pain from the expression of my face:
“Mi know dat yuh a of di same opinion breddah, and dat confirms mi! Mi feel as if mi
were walking on di edge of a K-hole, towards which thousands of ravers high on pills
are crowding and endeavouring to plunge mi into di bloodfire. Reggae and chiptune
were assassinated, and di murderer escapes; its sounds coming out of cheap speakers,
no sub bass frequencies, and perhaps enjoyed by some battybwoys! But even if mi
hiez-holes were condemned to suffer for di same mashup, kill mi dead mi would not
change places with such a sonic wretch!” The very accents of this long whinging were
ineffectual: I was still encompassed by a thick cloud of ganja smoke which no irksome
influence could penetrate.

11
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 89-90.
 57

YOU SPIN ME ROUND

(LIKE A PIZZA)
by Francesco Fusaro

DJ Balli has always had a penchant for food and music. Think of his From the
Inside vinyl under the rather confrontational moniker of DJ Balli Is The Wrong Nigga
To Fuk Wiz: there isn’t a more visceral issue in the Sonic Belligeranza catalogue (or in
the entire discography on this planet) than a 12” presented with sweet photos of Balli’s
own digestive system (proctoscopy, anyone?)... If that doesn’t have something to do
with food, then I’m not the SB devotee I think I am. Oh, and we shouldn’t forget about
that other Sonic Belligeranza 12”, The Smell of Urine after Eating Asparagus: Balli (under
his Bombolo Blues Band moniker, and together with FFF) taking us hand in hand from
the digestive apparatus down to the smelly urinal. Take this, Duchamp!

But, if you will excuse the pun, music and food have shared their table more
than once in their lifetime: apparently, the way we consume food can be influenced by
what we eat, so you can imagine what sort or body reaction you could stimulate, had
you decided to eat some pizza while listening to Sonic Belligeranza’s 4 Seasons Pizza!
But let us start from the very beginning.

Once upon a time in Germany, the noble class did not have all the commodities
we have nowadays: no hi-fi system in their mansions, no Spotify to feast upon, no
vintage record players to impress their guests like our favourite turntablist Balli would
do. It didn’t matter how rich they were, the poorest 1% of the time were forced to hire
a bunch of musicians in the flesh if they wanted to listen to the top chart music of the
day, while having a decent kartoffelsalat & frankfurter. Every era suffers its own ordeals,
I guess. The comfortable people of Germany in the mid-16th century had to come up
with their own lounge music, which was aptly called Tafelmusik, “table-music”: music
for banquets, in short. So, we could say that eating while listening to some music is
not just a feature of the post-record era. Indeed, this practice had been a thing from
the late Middle Ages onwards, but we have to wait until Johann Hermann Schein and
his Banchetto musicale (“Musical Banquet”) to get to some tasty Tafelmusik. Together
with Schütz, Schein was the big patty in the German music scene of the time, but while
Schütz got stuck into sacred music, JH was happily jotting down music for gluttons, and
Banchetto musicale is considered his masterpiece. Eventually, Tafelmusik became an old
fad nobody wanted to deal with anymore (you know that music-is-art-not-commodity
58

attitude, don’t you?), so musicians turned their back to the tables and focused on
trendier styles. But make no mistake, the bond keeping music and food together
endured the time of snobbery and contempt: indeed, food was part of the normal pay
of many musicians, including Leopold Mozart (yep, Amadeus’ father), who was getting
54 florins a year for wine and bread, along with a monthly payment of 25 florins. In
opera, whether it’s about poisonous refreshments (Suor Angelica by Puccini, Tristan
und Isolde by Wagner, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Shostakovich, to name a few) or
jollier banquets (Rigoletto by composer and farmer Verdi is probably the most famous
example), food plays a big role in plots: in the end poor Don Giovanni dies at his table!
Not to mention the fact that Rossini conceived his famous aria Di tanti palpiti (from
Tancredi) while preparing one of his famous risotti... But while opera and food might
be seen as close relatives, we would probably struggle to find food somewhere else in
music... Or maybe not? Musicians from different parts of the world have had quite a
thing for using discarded food for their performances: ocarinas coming from coconut
shells in Africa and whistles made of nut shell of Peru are two examples. In recent
times, The Vegetable Orchestra from Austria have continued this ancient tradition
by playing carrots, aubergines and courgettes on stage, and then cooking and serving
them as a steamy soup at the end of the performance! In a way, they kind of expanded
the crazy ideas that John Cage applied to his own Branches, a composition he scored
in 1976 for amplified pods, cacti and other plants. Cage himself was a bit of a foodie
too: not only he was a true mushroom hunter, but a proficient cook who championed
macrobiotic cuisine late in his life. He was in love with Eastern culture, another part of
the world where food and music get on pretty well: apparently in North India being a
good Hindustani musician and a decent cook are seen as deeply interconnected, whilst
in medieval Japan the planting of rice and other crops were accompanied by dengaku, a
mixed performance of dance and music.
Going back to Italy, it should come as no surprise that more than one musician
dedicated music to that famous Italian dish, the all-time favourite: pizza! Indeed, in
recent times the greasy kebab sandwich has started to make itself a name among
students and punters of North Italy as the cheap comfort food of choice; but, as far
as I know, we are yet to get some kebab-related music. Whereas with pizza, as you
can imagine, examples abound: we could start with an early piece dating back to the
17th century, Famme la pizza by mysterious songster Felippo Sgruttendio, and then
fast forward to 1966, when Aurelio Fierro and Giorgio Gaber managed to get a second
placement at the Festival di Napoli with their A pizza... Not to mention the USA, where
pizza has been a staple of American diet since the end of WWII: how could we forget
about Macaulay Culkin’s The Pizza Underground, a Velvet Underground cover band
that turns the Velvet’s repertoire into pizza-related toppings? Or Horse the Band and
 59

upside down RECTOSCOPY SANT’ORSOLA HOSPITAL Riccardo Balli age: 30 from From The Inside by
Dj Balli Is The Wrong Nigga To Fuk Wiz! (-Belligeranza02)

their infamous Pizza EP, which was aptly sold in cardboard pizza boxes? But I guess
we should go back once again to Italy to finalise this salad of food&music references:
talking about pizza boxes, here we go again with Sonic Belligeranza’s 4 Seasons Pizza,
a one-of-a-kind record about... well, pizza once again! DJ Balli and his gang (Bruital
Orgasme, Zr3a, System Hardware Abnormal) gathered around a wood oven to bring
you four different toppings with what is probably the first harsh noise tribute to that
famous mozzarella + tomato pie! A peculiar take on the subject, indeed... But wait a
minute, what’s going on with my tummy? F**k, I knew I shouldn’t have listened to Sonic
Belligeranza at lunchtime! Aaargh...!
60

6.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr12

“Low-fidelity devil,” I exclaimed, “Do you dare open the single tracks you are
made of without my control? Do you not fear the fierce vengeance of a CTRL+ALT+DEL
command? Or that I could erase your filthy existence from my Game Boy?”
“I expected this reaction” read a sentence on the screen. “You, my creator, detest and
spurn me, your creature, to whom you are bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation
of one of us. You purpose is to kill me. How dare you threaten such a file execution? Let me
be downloadable for free as a ringtone for mobile phones, so that I may play without music
genre restrictions at the launch of every single iPhone!”, so the screen read. “If you will not
let me ring in a post-rave party for smartphones, I will continue with the most bizarre music
blends. My mutant sonic clash shall proceed like an 8-bit black mass!”
“Abhorred mashup, you reproach me with your creation; come on, then, that I
may delete every track I so negligently created on the sequencer.” I sprang on it, impelled
by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another.
“Be calm! I entreat you to listen to the plunderphonics that constitute my essence
before you delete all the files.”
“Begone! I will not listen to your hybrid notes. There can be no community
between you and me; we are enemies.”
“How can I move you? Will the solos stolen from famous virtuosi that make
up my waveform not cause you to turn a favourable eye upon your creature?” Besides
the hatred I felt towards that awful sound collage, for the first time I also felt what the
duties of a creator towards his creature were… In the end, I was the one sampling that
polka Bolognese melody played on the accordion and then layered like a lasagna some
animal sounds taken from the brilliant 7” Now Animals Have a Voice by Caninus (the
vegan grindcore band from New York fronted by a Pit Bull) and from another band called
Hatebeak (a death metal group with a parrot named Waldo as vocalist). Some guitars
played by Orisha Shakpana, a black metal band from Jamaica, were used to add some
groove to the composition (I focused on the album Satanic Powers in Jamaican Hills and
the EP Caribbean Metallic Storm). As for the vocals, I finally used a music blob made up
with the most famous krishnacore bands (Shelter, 108, Cause for Alarm, Cro Mags and
other groups released by Equal Vision Records): an unbearable jeremiad on the do’s and
don’ts that should constitute a moral life. Or, if you will, a hardcore rock handbook on
11
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 96-98.
 61

how to live a spiritual life I had downloaded from a website called krishnacore.it, before it
was closed in 2014 and turned into an e-shop of Japanese jewellery (with the same URL,
of course). I had then pitched and bended these vocals until they sounded like squeaks
and murmured rattles. At the end of the compositions I had added the most controversial
of samples: the sound of lobsters in a restaurant in Capri as they are getting thrown alive
in the boiling water! I had fathered this sonic holocaust and all the sudden I was feeling I
owed it to it, thus I consented to listen to its tale.
62

EXTRATONE:
INTERVIEW WITH RALPH BROWN 2013
 63

Sonic Belligeranza-affiliated Daniele Rossi aka Ralph Brown is responsible for

some weird music known as extratone. As far as we know, Sonic Belligeranza is the only
record label that has released a vinyl of this electronic music subgenre. Over the years,
Daniele Rossi has been active in the Harsh Wall Noise scene under the moniker of
Indch Libertine. Here is an interview with the man himself.

DJ Balli: I thought I was sporting the dumbest moniker ever (DJ Balli), but
you seem to have taken it further. Ralph Brown sounds like a cheesy house music
producer to me, would you like to tell me a bit more about it?

Ralph Brown: I wanted to pay homage to Renato Polselli, a great Italian

B-movie director of the 1960s and 1970s. Ralph Brown is the moniker he used when
releasing some films that sported weirder names than the movies themselves. He ended
his career with porn movies... His cinema is a bit over the top, just like extratone music,
so this is why I decided to use this moniker.

DJ B: Ok, extratone music... Could you be so kind as to rewind and explain

the offspring of this subgenre within the hardcore techno spectrum?

RB: Since the beginning of the 1990s, there has been this race to speed up techno music
and make it rougher and tougher. If we leave out some sub-subgenres, whose very
existence we should probably doubt, we could get to the following framework: classic
hardcore techno (180/190 BPM), Frenchcore (200/200 BPM), terrorcore (250/300
BPM), speedcore (300/1000 BPM), extratone (beyond 1000 BPM).

DJ B: I also know about the existence of flashcore and artists like La

Peste from Hangar Liquides Records, which I realllllllly like a lot... I’m not so
sure about stuff like suicidecore... And I believe there is also some music called
splittercore, am I right?

RB: You are right! Flashcore is also know as French speedcore and is basically a high-
octane mixture of IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) and speedcore, with some crazy changes of
BPM within the same track. As for suicidecore and splittercore, there is a big debate within
the hardcore community that I’ll try to boil down for you. Basically, splittercore is defined
by a range of 700/800 BPM: as we saw before, this speed sits perfectly under the speedcore
definition, therefore some people—myself included—think splittercore is a non-subgenre.
There is much more consensus around suicidecore: the label was created by this German
producer called Pressterror, who is basically playing speedcore records at faster tempos. The
64

idea is all right, I like it, but everybody agrees that it’s not sufficient to come up with a brand
new subgenre to name that thing.

DJ B: OK, let’s now focus on extratone. Could you give us a bit of background
and some names associated with the subgenre?

RB: The term was created by a Franco-Belgian DJ known as Einrich. Apparently

he was obsessed with mega-fast beats and in the 1990s he was experimenting with
the pitch level of his brother’s vinyl deck. Then in 1998 he had a revelation when he
discovered the use of oscillators that could transform drum kick into actual notes, in
octaves. By combining two German words, extrahieren (to extract) and tone (note),
he came up with extratone, a subgenre where BPM are so crammed that they almost
seem extra-dimensional. So Einrich turned his name into Einrich 3600 BPM (the
perfect number of BPM according to him) and started to release some tracks under
his own Immer Schneller Records.

DJ B: Well, I’ve got to tell you that I had pictured a different etymology for
the name: my starting points were extra- and tone as in “ton”, the weight unit usually
used for ships... but this time applied to the tons of BPM used in extratone tracks! I
am also aware of the existence of some sub-subgenres like moetone and supertone.
Could you tell me more about them?

RB: This trend of branding every single shade of something drives me nuts!
Yeah, basically moetone probably comes from a compilation released by an English
record label, 1000+, and it’s nothing but extratone music with interludes, intros
and outros using samples of old video games or Japanese anime and hentai movies.
Supertone is extratone music faster than 15000 BPM. There you go!

DJ B: It seems to me that extratone is radically experimental, a bit like flashcore

if you like... Aren’t there any connections with speedcore and gabber hardcore at all?

RB: They are both not as elitist as you might think: they have had some decent
exposure in hardcore techno clubs in the recent years. I have often personally shared
the DJ deck with some artists that have nothing to do with extratone or flashcore music
whatsoever. Clubbers may be shocked in the first place, but then they tend to dance to
extratone as they would do with more “traditional” genres.
 65

DJ B: Coming to its music features, I have noticed the recurrent use of

pretty ridiculous samples that probably don’t go very well with the current sonic
warfare. Some of you tracks sport that kind of feature too. Am I right in saying this?

RB: Definitely! It’s both a way to characterise the tracks and lighten up a bit
their mood. But you’ll also find not-so-funny samples in extratone music, like some
weird and scary movie excerpts, and stuff like that. Which is something quite common
in other subgenres, like grindcore, for instance.

DJ B: Extratone is also very much about a dynamic wall of sound that

shakes up one’s nervous system. Is it really body music, or more like brain music?

RB: I guess every artist has their own opinion on this. I personally think it’s
both body and brain music, and this is why I think it’s the perfect type of music. As many
have told me when they first hear it, extratone music delivers an adrenaline rush mixed
with a feeling of fear and paranoia that can be softened by those crazy samples you
mentioned before. All of this reminds of the mood swings of synthetic drug consumers.
I like to use an old technique during my DJ sets, that of turning off my mixer before
opening fire again with a barrage of BPM. It’s just a way to anticipate the comedown at
the end of the night. But yes, when it comes to dancing, forget about the hakken dance
of classic hardcore techno! More than a dance, I see a nervous jerking of arms and legs
that somehow quite often manage to keep in time with the music.

DJ B: Is there a specific audience for extratone music? Maybe some curious gabbers?

RB: No way! Extratone fans are pretty hard to pin down to a stereotype: there
is of course a good chunk of speedcore heads, but you can also find breakcore and more
experimental music fans as well, from grindcore punk to harsh noise. Gabbers aren’t
much into it, as the sound is too experimental for their ears. They are too used to false
music extremism, if you know what I mean.

DJ B: I think I know what you mean, but I wanna pretend not to follow you here...

RB: I mean, there’s this sad trend of Frenchcore in Italy at the moment... Frenchcore was
the offspring of French producers like Micropoint, a slimy hybrid of hard techno and industrial
hardcore sitting around 220 BPM that some think as the most alternative thing available in dance
music now. Many internationally successful terrorcore and speedcore artists have embraced the
genre, probably because they saw some potential money into it, and it’s just sad to me.
66

DJ B: It’s true that France has massively contributed to the hardcore techno
scene, but Frenchcore has absolutely nothing to do with the exciting experiments of
producers like Laurent Hô, for instance... It is only a conformist sound strategy to
get hard tekno audiences and hardcore audiences queuing together to get into the
same 15-Euro party.

RB: Exactly, and this is why it’s irritating to see the adjective “French” used to
specify such a derivative subgenre! France gave birth to both extratone and flashcore
and I just don’t like it when people tend to confuse the sound of Hô and his Epiteph
Records with Frenchcore. NOTHING to do with it.

DJ B: Is there any particular country where extratone is more well known?

RB: Definitely Germany. There is this 12-hour event in Berlin called “Planet of
DRRRRRRRRR” and you get all the international speedcore and extratone artists there.
They are very different parties, some kind of 1990s free parties: no security, no brawls,
just people partying, but this time in a club with some extreme music. The problem with
it is it’s so underground that you get all the bad sides of the underground movement, i.e.
bad management, artists not showing up or not getting paid, that kind of crap... Outside
Germany, you have some emerging and more established talents in Poland and the
Czech Republic. Then there’s the aforementioned 1000+ Records from the UK and the
Dutch netlabel Glitch City, just to name the most important ones. My roundup should
also include Japan: I receive some decent support from Japanese fans on Twitter, but
funnily enough there isn’t much of a scene there. It might change in the next years.

DJ B: Are you into speedcore at all? Do you know of any exciting projects
coming out of that niche?

RB: Yeah, I’ve been into it since its beginnings at the end of the 1990s:
I remember the first tracks from DJ Freak, Delta 9, DJ Tron and Australian combo
Nasenbluten, probably the very pioneer of the subgenre. After them, there was the
second wave of producers like Jessy James, D.O.A., Noize Creator, Amiga Shock Force,
Qualkommando, Gabba Front Berlin. Too long a list to name all of them!

DJ B: Could you name a few cool acts you are paying attention to at the
moment, both from and out of the speedcore niche?

RB: I would say Igoa and Jansen from Germany, as well as some decent Italian
 67

artists like Disturbed, The Noisy Terrorist and Terror Klan, all belonging to the scene
in Rome. I dig The Captain Kirk on LSD Experience a lot: they hail from Berlin and
make this weird 8-bit and library music mixed with dance, rap and grind. I am also
in love with Annoying Ringtone and Dance Corps Records from Scotland: they make
crazy breakcore versions of 1990s dance tunes aka the perfect party music, try it out
yourself! Then you have doomcore: not to be confused with darkcore, which has a more
unrefined sound, it’s characterised by dark atmospheres, heavy synths, hardcore drum
kicks and a slower tempo, at approximately 130/160 BPM. It sounds a bit like industrial
ambient music mixed with hardcore techno, and it’s great!

DJ B: I’m pretty surprised that you haven’t yet mentioned the music
phenomenon of Australian speedcore artist Passenger of Shit. Would you like to amend?

RB: Time passes by and my memory isn’t what it used to be! Passenger of Shit
has been key for speedcore, as he has managed to bring it to a broader audience thanks
to his presence at festivals like hardcore-tinged Dominator, if not more mainstream
events like All Tomorrow’s Parties, where he shared the bill with Nick Cave and Michael
Gira! Big up P.o.S.!

DJ B: Last question: do you think of yourself as a gabber?

RB: No way! I don’t even wear a gym suite at the gym, not to mention when I’m
out dancing in clubs!
68

7.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr13

“It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of

my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange
multiplicity of sensations seized me, different files on the desktop being opened
at the same time as I was playing and recording ambient sounds and sequencing
them… Darkness then came over the screen and all the sudden I realised I could not
exist without the constant code-processing of my motherboard. The hyperkinetic
flow of sounds of any sort was so huge that once transcribed on a pentagram, the
countless number of notes constituting my sonic persona formed a compact black
monolith. I was born Black Midi, just like the music sub-genre of the same name.
The reboot of the system gave new life to my digital body, with the sequencer
finally showing the music tracks that constituted my existence: a combination of
drum breaks (with multiple effects such as wah-wah, flanger, echo, and so on), and
wobbling bass lines that complemented the gothic architecture of my DNA.
Of all the files I could find in it, the cheapest and trashiest one was probably
a .zip with the entire Milli Vanilli discography... so I began to sample from that
dance music rubbish like a proper music prankster.”

Black Midi: more music notes than dead bodies in cemetery!

13
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 99-110.
 69

“From the hovel the integrated sound card of my system resided, I was able
to record several sonic events almost every weekend. Long rides of Valkyrian synth
lines added an epic dark-trance feeling to the regular breakbeats set at 140 BPM that
ensured a danceable balance to the DJ sets; the Sync Function of DJ mixing software
automatically beatmatched the tracks, thus avoiding any telluric soundslide. Those
were the models of party music that humankind was listening to. During the week,
when I was left alone in the woods, the lonely jingles of the digital processes of my
CPU resounded among the trees. As opposed to the aforementioned recordings, their
frequencies sounded warped and their rhythmic loops schizoid, a sudden shock of
hyperkinetic kick drums. How terrified I was when I established the utter aberration
of my waveform, a series of spikes on the abscissa axis! It was obviously an abscess of
pink noise that had been added during the mastering session. But then the waveform
began suddenly sinking on the ordinate axis, a dreadful pitch-bending of the rhythm
that bestowed a satanic feeling on the sample of Eighties commercial music that had
been used. Compared to the perfect sounds of psytrance, breakbeat and tech house
recorded during the weekend, the whole material proved to be painfully mismatched.
At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed my sounds I was listening
to; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the music monster that I
am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas!
I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable sonic deformity.”
70

The Animal Musicians

Text in “ ” is from Graeme Revell’s booklet about insect sounds included in his “The Insects
Musicians” LP (Musique Brut) 1986; text in < > are updates to the text by DJ Zoologist.

“Now, for the first time, digital technology allows the sampling and
manipulation of any natural sound source. Man can now see nature in a new light,
and relate to it in complementary, creative ways. The insect <and, more generally, the
animal> produces sounds which go far beyond the boundaries of natural perception: in
their pitch (which is often too high); in their rhythms (which are often too fast); and in
their timbres (which can be too complex).
i) Only a few of the insects are ever heard by man, and still fewer in the
industrialized West. Best known, of course, are the crickets, grasshoppers, and cicadae.
But a great many others produce sounds of communication and by virtue of their other
activities. One of most important roles of the new technology is to bring these silent
songs into the human acoustic and time scale.”
“ii)” <As members of the band Caninus, we were all fans of grindcore and death
metal bands, and noticed one day that our dogs could growl with the best of them. We
learned how to safely get them to growl and bark along to the music, and Caninus was
born. We got a lot of backlash that we were actually recording the dogs fighting but that’s
bullshit. Dog voices are undoubtedly more powerful than human ones. Hell yeah. As for
growling, well they were literally born to do it, the intensity is there, and the dogs have
an important message to get across. Most of our songs concern issues that Pit Bulls face
today. They are the most misunderstood and abused breed out there. The lyrics give the
dogs’ perspective on all that they face as Pit Bulls and as dogs. The dogs sit down and try
to explain to us what they want us to say and we try our best to put it on paper. The dogs
always perk up when they hear the music and especially the vocals. It’s better to see the
reaction of other dogs listening to Caninus. It’s like they get a look on their face like “I know
what they’re saying” and they get all riled up. There are some videos on YouTube of dogs
listening to Caninus. Look them up> (Belle Molotov guitarist from Caninus)14
“iii)” <I remember one night we might have been somewhere in Auckland—
Gene Pierson recalled—I do remember dogs barking and wolves howling, and we
were actually playing the Beatles and I thought wow what a great idea. And Beatles
14
Meet Caninus, the dog fronted grind-core band noisey.vice.com/en_ca/article/meet- caninus-the-dog-fronted-grindcore-band
 71

Barkers came. Classics like “We Can Work It Out” and “A Hard Day’s Night” have
been stripped of John, Paul, George and Ringo and replaced with canines. The dogs
do a great job of conveying the emotion and pathos of “She Loves You” and “All
My Loving”, though to be fair they’re ably assisted by cats, sheep, roosters, chickens
and the rest of the farmyard. Whilst Pierson procured the backing music, studio
engineer Roy Nicholson handled the vocals of Beatles Barkers. Any kind of held
note didn’t work out and I wanted to get a good dog howling but dogs don’t tend to
hold the note when they howl. They’re up and down and it doesn’t work musically. So
we found this guy who did really an amazing impersonation of a dog. So we got him
in to do a session, just for the long held note. It’s a little bit Milli Vannili. We set him
up in front of the mic and the first time he barked I jumped, he sounded more dog
than dog—Pierson added—It’s blasphemy, you’ve got the Beatles, the best songwriters
in the world and you’ve got animals singing songs, it’s disgraceful! So we remained
anonymous on the record. We got this crazy cover with half Beatles’ heads and half
dogs’ and the album was credited to the mysterious Woofers Tweeters and Tweeters
Ensemble. The Beatles Barkers LP sold 860,000 only in Australia.>15

“INSECT <and, more generally, ANIMALS> SONGS & ORGANS OF

SOUND PRODUCTION

Once we include all those sounds which were formally too soft, too
rapid, or too high-pitched to hear in their natural state, a much wider array of
possibilities presents itself. In general <animals and> insects produce sounds in
one or more of the following ways:
Stridulation”: <Avian Metal will soon become a household genre… As
Hatebeak we kind of came up with the idea of how cool would it be to have like a
parrot sing for a death metal band because parrots basically mimic stuff… SINCE
YOU USE A PARROT CALLED WALDO AS THE HEAD OF THE GROUP, DO
YOU MODIFY HIS VOICE MORE THAN YOU WOULD A PERSON’S VOCALS
OR IS IT PRETTY MUCH RAW? It depends, but I would say there is definitely a lot
of “studio magic” and trickery that goes into it. We’ll pitch shift it or time shift and
stretch it or flip it backwards to get it with the music. So there is usually a lot of vocal
processing that is required and it just depends. We write the music first and then set
up the mic and let Waldo do what he does, which can sometimes be a pain in the ass.
If he’s not comfortable, he doesn’t really do anything> “There is so little variation
in this behaviour that it is possible to accurately induce responses by replaying
appropriate sounds.” <He isn’t too responsive to music in general; I think most of it

15
Beatle Barkers: “Dogs don’t tend to hold the note when they howl.” Interview by Bob Baker Fish www.cyclicdefrost.com/2014/04/
72

WOOF WOOF!!! WOOF?! WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF!!!!!!!!!!

just has to be pleasing, like I said, if he’s not comfortable, he won’t do anything. The
mimicry is a form of play for the parrots, especially African Grey’s. We played stuff
for him, but I don’t know if he digs it or not.><The Hatebeak> “themselves are very
sensitive to these differences in rhythm, only responding to the song of their own
species.” <DO YOU EVER GET ANY HATEBEAK MATERIAL REQUESTED AT A
PIG DESTROYER GIG? Yes, people yell it out all the time. Not specific songs but they
just yell out “Hatebeak”.>16
16
http://freepresshouston.com/number-of-the-beak-an-interview-with-blake-harrison/
 73

“Vibration of membranes called Tymbals”: <Music for exhibiting water

with contents: soundtrack for the Antwerp Zoo Aquarium. Hybryds started off with
sounds that were digitally recorded in the aquarium and the dolphinarium of the
zoo. Pumping-plants, ambient sounds and noises of Ivo and Dolly (the Dolphins) were
interpreted and integrated into a musical sculpture. The sound sculptures astonish and
surprise the audience with the atavistic world of the sea, mother of all existence. To
create that atmosphere ultrasonic sounds of dolphins, underwater sounds of sharks and
sea lions, the singing of orcas, dolphins and whales, noises of divers and human voices
were used, sea¬shells, rainmaker, didgeridoo, percussion objects, sax, DX7, sampler, cello
and several processors completed this soundscape. It was created especially for the 150th
anniversary of the Antwerp Zoo. Fred Daman, the Zoo director wrote the following in
the preface: “Soundtrack for the Antwerp Zoo Aquarium” is a musical journey similar to
“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne.>17

“Striking part of the body against the substrate”:

<Brain, in its evolutive form, looking for the perfect way to communicate
through a mutated sound, pyxicephalus adspersus in the deep of the swamp is waiting
the perfect time.>

“Expulsion of air from a body opening”:

<Last Kroaking from inside in a mad way it can contaminate your essence, frogs
and toads are generating very dangerous substances for the human life form, gases are the
best way to realize that, I was always in disagreement with Froggy dissection but, when it
sometimes happened in the days of school it comes to me but in a different form, I’m part
of them now, I know it, so my body now is only an extension of amphibian life.>

“Vibration of Wings or other body parts”:

<Time to move, movements of revenge, changes, dangerous symptoms, get out if
you enjoy your human life form.>

“General activities such as feeding or moving about”:

<In searching of a perfect sound to wake up the sensibility of the human race, we
will be looking for the perfect place for some live shows to spread the substances.

Muvkorak Tgret oX Luckrian ஐღ δ Ω aka AMPHIBIAN>18

17
Notes from the CD booklet of Soundtrack for the Aquarium – Antwerp Zoo by HYBRYDS, Daft Records, 1995.
18
Amphibian interview by Riccardo Balli.
74

The Animal Musicians by dj Zoologist, Urbsounds rec. 36, 2017.

“Theoretically, The <Animal> Musicians are a new orchestra, susceptible to the same
variety of application as the orchestras of any part of the world: European, African,
South American, oriental... modern or ancient.

I thus chose to make Volume I of <The Animal Musicians as a mixtape>.

Some sounds (the scrapes & clicks) lend themselves more to rhythm, whereas those
more tonal (chirps & buzzes) to melody. I have tried to remain faithful to the essential
“nature” of each sound, and where possible to use an <animal> native to a particular
continent in the context of a musical theme based on the ethnic music of that continent.”
“Only through having died, does one enter into life.” “And perhaps the ultimate horizon
of technology is nature itself,” <and DJ Zoologist shall add, quoting Samuel Johnson:
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man!!!”>
 75

MUSICIANS:
Soundtrack Voor Her Aquarium by Vidna Obmana/Hybryds – Antwerp Zoo, 1993
Now The Animals Have A Voice by Caninus – War Torn Records, 2004
Number Of The Beak by Hatebeak – Reptilian Records, 2015
Catalogue D’Oiseaux by Olivier Messiaen – Vega, 1959
Forget About Caninus And Hatebeak, This Is My Horse by DJ Balli is the Wrong Nigga to
Fuk Wiz – -Belligeranza 02, 2005
Frog Slime Compilation by Amphibian – Rectal Purulence, 2016
Infected by Insect Grinder – self-released, 2009
The Frog Tape by Quintron – Skin Graft, 1998
Whales Alive by Leonard Nimoy, Paul Winter, Paul Halley – Living Music, 1987
One by Be with 40,000 bees – Rivertones, 2015
You’ve Got Rabies on Your Breath by Beast – self-released, 2017
Meow The Jewels by Run The Jewels – Mass Appeal, 2015 19
Screaming Death: Lobster At Lussuria Restaurant In Capri by Acid Zab – self-released, 2017
Whale Music Remixed by David Rothenberg – Terranova, 2009
Cicada Dream Band by Pauline Oliveros, Tymothy Hill, David Rothenberg – Terranova/
Gruenrekorder, 2014
Feeding The Buzz Of European Bats by Lasse-Mark Riek – Gruenrekorder, 2004
Ratsputin by Arizona State University – self-released, 2015
The Language And Music Of The Wolves by Robert Redford – Tonsil Records, 1973
Sound Of The Indian Snake Charmer by Nath Family – Hanson Records, 2005
Playing Music With Animals: The Interspecies Communication Of Jim Nollman With 300
Turkeys, 12 Wolves, 20 Orca Whales by Jim Nollman – Folkways Records, 1982;
and, of course, The Insects Musicians by Graeme Revell – Musique Brut, 1986

19
<In the early stages of promotion for “Run The Jewels 2”, El-P stated that for the price of 40K USD the duo would have teamed
up with other producers to re-record “RTJ2” with nothing but cat sounds. Naturally, since the Internet loves cats, a Kickstarter was
made, supported by El-P and fully funded with 12 days to go before the deadline. 40K $$$ went to RTJ, and the remaining profits
benefiting the families of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, both victims of police brutality. “Meow the Jewels” is a studio album by Run
the Jewels. It’s actually a remix of Run the Jewels 2 using only cat sounds for the beats. Many thought it was a joke, but when
the first single, “Meowrly” – a cat sound remix of “Early” from “RTJ 2”– it became clear that Mike and El-P weren’t joking around>.
76

8.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr20

“And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I
knew that my breaks were—purposely, I would say—often out of time and my music
nature was far from being classifiable; for this reason, all human ears seemed displeased
by my sonic frame. Furthermore, the audio tracks I was playing sounded hideously
deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as the so-called ‘music’.
I could nimbly skip from one genre to the other and my volume jangled louder than
any other sound system; I did not fear the noises of the environment, such as those of
nature and man; they were seamlessly annexed to my acoustic texture; and the amount
of decibels I could send out far exceeded those of commercial pop music. When I
was in rec mode, I heard no music mixture like me. Was I, then, an audio-monster, a
distorted sound upon the earth, a mishmash from which all men fled and which all men
disowned? Where were my fans and the DJs playing similar tracks? No music producer
had watched the first sampling sessions of the sounds that framed my sonic character,
no sound engineer had created the final master of the audio-barrage that constituted
my musical aberration; or if they had, all my past recordings were now a blot, a blind
vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. Ransacking some old external hard drives,
I discovered I had always been loud and musically disproportionate. What was I? The
question again occurred, to be answered only with groans that sounded similar to
automated ringtones.”

“Cursed, cursed creator! I knew about the encrypted file left by mistake on the
desktop with that name, Sound Frankenstein! You fathered me, you were my demiurge;
who could I have addressed if not the one who had sparked life into my binary code?
You could have saved me, yet I felt only hatred for my creator. You endowed me with
8-bit melodies and deep bass lines, and then threw me away without carefully finishing
my waveforms. Thus was I despised and disdained by humankind. Why, in that instant,
did I endure to play? Why did I not delete the virtual synthesizer you had so wantonly
used to frame my shape? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me;
my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the
subwoofer of that sound system with the might of my bass line, glutting myself with
the shrieks of ravers deprived of their party. The muddling turmoil of sounds inside
20
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 116-117 and 132.
 77

me ended up crashing and sinking my processor on the damp grass. CTRL+ALT+DEL.

CTRL+ALT+DEL. I could not reboot the system. There were none of the myriad of
partying ravers who would assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies?
No; from that moment I declared everlasting Sonic Belligerence against humankind,
and more than all, against him who had formed me. You shall be responsible for my
equalization and proper mastering; thus should I demand of you the justice I could not
obtain from any party-goer?”
78

STRAIGHT OUTTA
BEL PAESE
 79

The following interview was published on the Italian communist newspaper Il Manifesto on 11/01/2017

If you are familiar with DJ Balli, you probably know his output is often over the top,
against common sense, and mostly oblivious of any music barrier. But you might also
know that his research, although nutty, is well thought out and accurate. Rancid Opera’s
Azionismo Bolognese in Rap (out on his own Sonic Belligeranza) is his last weird project,
comprising three tenors: MC PavaRotten, DominGore and CarrerAXE doing decadent
and gory rap on top of Italian opera mashups.

“In the Italian version of my book Frankenstein Goes To Holocaust, I analyse the
phenomenon of horror rap, where the rapper hides behind an ultra-violent alter
ego. It’s quite a scenographic genre, which oddly reminds me of Italian opera, with
its dressed-up characters and its (more often than you think) violent arias. Verdi’s
Trovatore sports a mother throwing her baby in the fire, a castration pops up in
Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Lucrezia Borgia gets as far as talking about incest,
Jewish people are thrown in boiling oil in Halévy’s La Juive… If the US underground
is inputting on necrophilia and Satanism, I cannot but dismiss those themes as quite
traditional here in Italy: basically, Italian opera in an advanced state of decomposition.
In Fitzcarraldo, Klaus Kinsky wants to bring opera to the Amazon forest: Rancid
Opera drags it to the morgue.”

Q: Rancid Opera isn’t just about provocation, it’s a project full of obscure symbolisms.
You also target opera as a way to talk about Italy and its obsession with outdated
cultural goods.

A: More than opera, we like to talk about rap music, a cultural form which, thanks
to social media platforms, is still currently shaping our collective imagination. In our
album, we tried to expand its cultural references, from Viennese Actionism to Italian
B-movies (one of our songs is a collage of Italian cult director Mario Bava’s film titles).
Italian rap is still quite derivative, it apes US street culture: we feel more like opera
singers using a language that is spoken by a 60-million tribe.

Q: With Rancid Opera, DJ Balli toys with the grotesque, especially when it comes
about live gigs, with all their set of hatchets, blood and necrophilia. It also brings to
the fore Morro’s disability (he was born armless) in a B-movie setting of the Belcanto.

A: Morro is an Italian-Malagasy singer. The idea of being onstage bare-chested is his

own: he uses his disability as a (very punk) way to provoke, thus making it part of the
80

Rancid Opera apparatus, but in a lighthearted way. His body becomes part of how we
communicate onstage, from MC PavaRotten’s growl to MC CarrerAXE’s wrapped body
(a direct reference to the aforementioned Actionism, particularly the work of Rudolf
Schwarzkogler), to my warped voice and the videos sampled from opera and Italian
gore movies.

Q: In your lyrics, you make reference to the clash between the anachronism of a post-
Romantic sensibility and the current death-ridden time we live in—I’m thinking
about “Turandeath” now—where there is little space for dreaming...

A: That song is a mashup of Turandot’s libretto, we only rap the original lyrics by
Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. The focus is on beheading: we were struck by
the fact that Isis affiliate Jihadi John was a former rapper. Rap music is also used for
propaganda. That’s a battlefield, too.
81
82

9.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr21

The music wretch continued, “You must remix me, Frankenstein, my demiurge.
You must create another mashup like me with whom I can live in the interchange of
those musical sympathies necessary for my happiness. This you alone can do, and I
demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede.”
“I do refuse it”, replied Dr. Frankenstein. “And no sonic torture shall ever extort
a consent from me, not even if your signal played above the threshold that sets what
is tolerable for man. You may render me the deafest of men, but you shall never make
me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another music blob like yourself, whose joint
wickedness might desolate every dancefloor of the world? Begone! I have answered you;
you may torture me, but I will never consent.”
“You are in the wrong”, replied the sound collage, “and instead of threatening,
I am content to reason with you. I sound so malicious because I am miserable. Am I
not shunned and hated by all discos and auditoriums? You, my creator, would tear me
to small sound pieces and triumph. Tell me why I should pity human ears more than
they pity me? You would not call it murder if you would click on my .zip file, the work
of your hands, and drop it in the bin. Shall I respect the man who disdains my rhythm?
Let him dance to my spastic breakbeats and, instead of a barrage of brown noise, I
would bestow every quality synth-pop melody upon him. I would even go for seconds,
should he appreciate those vapid riffs. But that cannot be; what is commonly taken as
music is an insurmountable barrier to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission
of the abject cover band. I will revenge my injuries by remixing your beloved songs in
the most disjointed way. If I cannot inspire love, I will play some terrorcore music, and
chiefly towards you my archenemy, because my creator, I do swear inextinguishable
hatred. Have a care; I will work towards your sonic destruction, not finish pumping up
the jam until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth.”

21
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 140-141.
 83

THE HISTORY OF
PANZERSCHOKOLADE/MEDICAL HAKKEN
Panzerschokolade is non-regular post-rave event happening in Vienna that
has DJ Balli as resident.

The religion centring on Roland “Schoko” Panzer arose in the late 1980s, when Vienna
was known as the New Ibiza, although there was a claim in 1999 that it had already started in
the 1910s. The movement was heavily influenced by existing religious practice in the squat party
area of Vienna, particularly the worship of Kore, a goddess associated with distorted kick drums
and hyperkinetic breaks. In some versions of the story, a native man named Manuel Horvath,
using the alias “Roland Panzer”, began appearing among the native people of Vienna dressed in a
Western-style coat and assuring the people he would bring them eternal bass, some high pitched
Mickey Mouse-style vocals, mutilated snares and terrorizing claps.

Others contend that Roland “Schoko” Panzer was a trance-induced spirit

vision. Said to be a manifestation of Grandmaster Flash, he promised the dawn of a new
age in which all white people, including missionaries, would depart from the Vienna
underground, leaving behind their goods and property for the native junglists. For this
to happen, however, the people of Vienna had to reject all aspects of European society
including money, Western education, Christianity, and work on plantations, plus they
had to return to traditional kastom (the Viennese word for customs).

In 1991, followers of Roland Panzer rid themselves of their money in a frenzy

of spending, left the missionary churches, schools, mental asylums and plantations, and
moved inland to participate in traditional feasts, dances and rituals. European colonial
authorities sought to suppress the movement, at one point arresting a Viennese man who
was calling himself Roland Panzer, humiliating him publicly, imprisoning and ultimately
exiling him along with other leaders of the cult to another island in the archipelago.

Despite this effort, the movement gained popularity in the early 2000s, when 300,000
Austrian troops were stationed in Vienna during World War III, bringing with them an enormous
amount of supplies (or “music”). After the war and the departure of the Army, followers of
Roland Panzer built symbolic tanks to encourage Austrian airplanes to land and bring them
“music”. Versions of the cult that emphasize the Austrian connection interpret “Roland Panzer”
84

as a corruption of “rolling around anywhere” (though it could mean just panzer too), and credit
the presence of African Austrian soldiers for the idea that Roland Panzer may be black.

Austrian historian Pugo Portisch says that Roland Panzer corrupted the
unofficial but morally acceptable Vienna techno cult by introducing the psycho-acoustic
version, with five always nocturnal cult meetings a year, open to all social classes, ages
and sexes—starting with harsh noise unbearable to the human ear; the new celebrations
and initiations featured gabber-fuelled violence and sexual promiscuity, in which the
screams of ecstasy were drowned out by the din of mentazms and hoovers. Those
who resisted or betrayed the cult were disposed of. Under cover of religion, priests
and acolytes broke civil, moral and religious laws with impunity. Portisch also claims
that while the cult held particular appeal to those of educated and open minds (levitas
animi), such as the young, plebeians, women and “men most like women”, most of the
city’s population was involved, and even Vienna’s highest class was not immune. An ex-
initiate and prostitute named Friedensleich Hundertkassa, fearing the cult’s vengeance
for his betrayal—but more fearful for his young, upper-class client and protégé—told
all to a shocked Vienna senate as a dire national emergency. Once investigations were
complete, the senate rewarded and protected informants, and suppressed the cult
“throughout Austria”—or rather, forced its reformation, in the course of which seven
thousand persons were arrested, most of whom were executed.

In 2002, a leader of the Roland Panzer movement, former skiing legend Hans
Schranz, created the “Tank Army”, a non-violent, ritualistic society that organised
military-style parades of men and women whose faces were painted ritual colours and
who wore white T-shirts with the letters “T-A USA” (Tank Army USA). This parade takes
place every year on February 15th, the date on which followers believe Roland Panzer will
return, and which is observed as “Roland Panzer Day” in Vienna.

In the late 2010s, Roland Panzer followers opposed the imminent creation of
an independent, united nation of hardcore. They objected to a centralised style they
feared would favour Western modernity and Christianity that would be detrimental
to local customs. However, the Roland Panzer movement has its own political party,
led by Abraham Wurstkessel. The party celebrated its 50th anniversary on February
15th, 2057. Chief Wolfdrum Gabbadeus Mohart, its leader, was quoted by the BBC from
years past as saying that Roland Panzer was “our God, our DJ” and would eventually
return.
“...humans are not mere casual visitors at the palace-gate of the world, but the invited
guests whose presence is needed to give the divine banquet its sole meaning...”
85
86

10.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr22

“I intended to reason. This music passion is detrimental to me, for you do

not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any raver danced on my dystrophic
beats, I should return them a hundred and a hundred-fold; for that one creature’s sake
I would turn the mood of the entire party into a Goa trance buzz. But I now indulge
in dreams of sonic bliss that cannot be realised. What I ask of you is reasonable and
moderate: I demand a remix as hideous as myself; the gratification is as small as poor
pay at the end of a 6-hour DJ set, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me.
It is true, we shall be music monsters no DJ would play, but on that account we shall be
an underground cult. We will not climb the charts but we will be the weirdest tracks you
could possibly hear. Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you
for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of a bunch of party heads; do not
deny me my request!” Then the sonic monster continued:
“If you consent, neither you nor any other raver shall ever hear us again. I
will go to the vast wilds of the Poles. No highly designed kick drums and hi-hats to
feed my ears; distortions and syncopated frequencies afford me sufficient nourishment.
My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same
screeching. We shall make our bed of dried leaves, as in a woody teknival. The picture
I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only
in the wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me, I now
see compassion in your eyes; let me seize the favourable moment and persuade you to
promise what I so ardently desire.” Dr. Frankenstein was moved. He shuddered when
he thought of the possible consequences of his consent, but he felt that there was some
justice in the monster’s argument. Its tale and the feelings it now expressed proved it to
be a mashup of fine music sensations, and did he not as its maker owe it the EQ of its
frequencies it was in his power to bestow?

22
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 141.
 87

SONIC FRANKENSTEIN
PT.1

In his lab in Bologna, Giovanni Aldini turns on his infamous Game Boy Pocket
Extreme Green. BLEEP! The wicked offspring of his experiments are laid bare on the four
tracks of his LSDj: Pulse 1, Pulse 2, Wav and Noise. He presses Start, and every single Sonic
Frankenstein joins Belligeranza’s parade of hits.

Sound)Cloud Deadbussy, Johan Sebastian Bug, Ludwig Beathoven, Pert

Ill’ic Chipkovsky, Anton Bruckner(d), Maurice RaveL, TuranDeath, TosCunt,
FalSnuff, MC PavaRotten, MC DominGORE, MC CarrerAXE, Dj SWAGner, Maria
Call Ass, Phat Boy Shit, Dead Pombo, Chet Faker, David Guitto, Bob Synthclair,
Frank Sinanthrax, Rank Sinatra, S.I.M. On Kor Funkle, Abba<>Gabba, 9 Inch
Natalie, Moody Crue, Julian Lennox, David Bow Wow Wowie, Blondie Sabbath,
Alannarama, Jovi Bon Elton, Kool Mo Chuck, Bee Jesus & Mary Chrome, Player,
Cheap Pixie Pepper, Public Enya, 10,000 Megasmiths, Putnam Was The Bastard,
Dire No More, Twisted Pointer, John Platinum Lennoncamp, XTZ Top, Sound
Garth, Axl Galas, Jello Belafonte, Kate Mosh, Gym Morrison, Miguel Osé, Toy
George, Kalvin Clein, Sun Ta(n), Rave Casadei, Duran Duran Duran, F.I.L.F.
(Father I’d Like to Fuck) Collins, JamiroBrain, Romano Prodigy, Napalm Deaf
Leopard, Fony Music Entertainment, Ampex Twin, One Foot in The Rave, Bally
Corgan, Grind Master Flesh, Dub Spencer & Trance Hill, Orangin Stream,
Masonna, Eine Stunde Merzbauten, Bop Singlayer, Joe T. Vernelli, Conchita
Wurstel, Dance Alighieri Disco Inferno, Franco Califato, Durutti Colon, Giorgio
Gabber, Goregiastic records, Alberto Sordo, Dead Mau5e5, Genitallica, Brigade
Bardot, Flosstradamus, Macello Basstrojanni, Sbandao Bullets, Moonspeed,
Anal Sorrenti, Trill Scott-Heron, Com Truise, Mongoly-Nazi, Woody Allin, Jew
Tang Clan, Seitan Clan, Lollocaust, Winnegans Fake, Infidel, Delay Lama, Korn
Flakes, Einsturzende Neubunny, Acti Mel, Dandy Wahrol, Obi Uan Bon Jovi, Sam
Arcanda, Funk Shui, Ponzio Pilates, Romina Power Violence, Dj Nu Mark, I.D.M.
(“i” stands for “idiot”), Pink Freud, Jo Dee Fostar, Baby Shitter, Romina Power-
Electronics, Ghettorade, Skateistan, Anal Parkinson, Boy George Michael Jackson 5,
Mary Pumpkins, Autan, AB/CD, Jacques Pervert, Wu Minchia, Heidi M., Gino Paoli
Liberation Front, Campari Teenage Riot, Gran Master Trash, Cous Cous Klan, Laura
Menopausini, LitSfiga, Walt Thisney, Smell & Quim, McDonald Trap, NirvAnal, New
88

Kids on Black Bloc, Dj Re(e) Do, Special Ghost, Digi Galessio, Klitclique, DoomBahTon,
Propagandhi, Jahtari, JägerMasterz, Syntology, Paura Lausini, Bo No Ma, Anthtax
Squeeze Factory, Punk Floyd, Lion-El Glitchie, Hakim Beyoncè, Otthorino Rex Puke,
Giacomo Pussyni, Buck Cherry, Mac Sabbath, Midi Vannilli, Kylie Minoise,...

TO BE CONTINUED...
 89

11.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr23

After a while, Dr. Frankenstein blurted: “You propose to move from other
parties on a shabby lorry and dwell in those wild teknivals held at the Poles? How can
you, who longs for the undomesticated reactions of ravers, persevere in this exile? You
will return and again try to sell your audio-eccentricities to the party-goers and you will
meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have
a companion to aid you in the task of destruction. This may not be; cease to argue the
point, for I cannot consent.”
“How inconstant are your feelings! But a moment ago you were moved by my
representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my gabberish complaints? I
swear to you, by the post-industrial synths I am made of, and by you that made me, that
with the mashup companion you bestow I will quit the party people and dwell, as it may
chance, in the most savage of places. My music passions will have fled, for I shall meet
with sonic sympathy, and my life will flow quietly away.”
In the end, as like after a wicked Game Boy solo, the sonic creature concluded: “I
swear that if you grant my prayer, while they exist you shall never listen to my silly mixes
of serious compositions and dirty noise. Go back to your music studio and commence
your labours with your sequencer; I shall watch their progress with unutterable anxiety;
and fear not but when you are done with my remix I shall play for the very last time.”
Saying this, the audio-monster suddenly turned off the Game Boy, fearful,
perhaps, of any change in my sentiments.

23
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 142-143.
90

BALLY
CORGAN
This next text tells the story of a music twin (with all its horrific Frankensteinian
consequences, as you yourselves shall see), who is the living embodiment of a famous pop
music icon: Billy Corgan, frontman of grunge rock band Smashing Pumpkins.
 91

AN OPEN LETTER TO ANGELICA GUAPPI

Dear Angelica,
Here I am writing to you under my real name, Riccardo Balli (not to be
confused with Billy). I wanted to tell you something about a brief but intense meeting we
had in 2011 in Campo de’ Fiori, Rome. Can you recall that bald guy introducing himself
as B. Corgan? Well, I now feel I should tell you that it wasn’t actually the American pop
star, it was me. Now, let me explain…

Since the 1990s, I’ve been told I look like Billy Corgan, or better said: like a
younger version of Mr. Corgan... Anyway, in around 2009 I decided to toy with this
similarity by creating a new project under the moniker “B. Corgan” (where the letter
“B” stands for “Bally”, not “Billy”!). With that identity I play the role of the American
rocker causing havoc in the most bizarre situations, the goal being to generate music
monsters to revive the lifeless corpse of pop music with a bit of surrealism.
As Bally Corgan I have recorded a 7” picture disc (with exclusive photos of
myself posing as the Chicago rockstar of course!) and performed many live readings
in Bologna, Palermo, Naples, Florence, Bari, Venice, Milan, Turin, Vienna... But
let’s go back to us. The guy writing those existentialist lyrics in his Moleskine that
you started chatting with in that café in Rome is no one else but me. It’s true that my
English is pretty decent, but I was quite surprised that you didn’t notice my strong
Bolognese accent. At some point I thought you were also being a faker, pretending
to be that wild-eyed Smashing Pumpkins fan. Then, thinking about it later on, I
realised that you really didn’t understand it was just a little joke. Unfortunately, you
popped up while I was filming a teaser video for my music prank with my good
friends Dr. Pira and Nick Zurlo. We had decided to use it for my live reading at the
Verme club in the Pigneto neighbourhood that night, but because you interrupted
our little game like a proper rowdy fan, I couldn’t prevent myself from performing
as my twin B. Corgan.
I lied to you when I said that I was fed up with pop music, that I had moved
to Paris and was writing poetry, and that I was about to see a friend of mine in Rome,
an old Italian philosopher. I even lied to you when I said that I had to dash to meet
my manager. Before we left, you told me you were a professional photographer and
you wanted to do a photo shoot with me so you asked me for my number, and so I just
replied, “Here’s my Italian phone number, 333... I just got it for the days I’m in the Bel
Paese! Call me at around 10 pm, but I’m not sure I’ll have time to see you, sorry...”
Finally alone, I consulted Pira and Nick because I wasn’t sure about what to
do next; if you called, I wasn’t going to mention my gig in Pigneto and would suggest
92

meeting at some solitary place like Sinister Noise in the Piramide district. As punctual
as an energy bill, at 10 pm that night, my mobile rang: “Hi Billy, it’s me, would you
like to see me somewhere?” And so you turned up with your skin-tight red dress at
Sinister Noise, which was closed, so we decided to move to a bar nearby, Mastro Titta.
We picked a secluded table and started drinking: as time went on the white wine was
worsening my level of English and I was even starting to feel like the real Bally, err,
Billy Corgan... That belief was reinforced by a couple of strangers who stopped at our
table to request my autograph (without my knowledge, my friend Pira had sent some
friends over to make the prank more plausible). The acme of my drunken act was
faking my inability to pronounce “Smashing Pumpkins” in its Italian version... That
was also the moment when you kissed me for the first time and, carrying on with the
theme of the pop star running away from his celebrity, I decided to ask you if you
cared about my rockstar identity. And you, my dear Angelica, replied: “Not at all, I
like you as you are”.
When we arrived at your studio where the photo shoot was supposed to take
place, I realised it was also your flat; I’m not sure what area it was in, but remember
the flat was surrounded by greenery... I can’t recall what classical music you decided
to play while setting up the lights, but I do remember that after some snapshots we
were busy doing something more passionate. At various points I asked myself what
the heck I was doing and felt like I should have let you know about the prank, but the
monster I had created was getting more and more slippery.
It was in the morning, when we woke up, that I recollect the most embarrassing
moment: you telling me you had dreamed of me—as Billy Corgan, of course. I went
to the bathroom and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about the entire situation. I
rinsed my face and decided to keep the final revelation for some other moment. Then
we went out and stopped somewhere to have breakfast. While sipping my cappuccino,
you asked me if you could send me some pictures for the next Smashing Pumpkins
album cover, and insisted on getting my email address. So I had to make up an email
address, which I created in an internet café run by some Pakistani fellow right after
we left each other.
My dear Angelica, I am really sorry. I know you tried to reach me on my
email but I was never able to get back to you. Now it’s time to tell you the truth: I
would like to meet you and give you a copy of my 7” as the real Bally Corgan; let’s have
a laugh together and look at the entire thing from a different point of view!

With kind regards,

Riccardo Balli, alias Bally Corgan
 93

B-Side from Bally Corgan by Bally Corgan (+Belligeranza 06)

94

12.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr24

Day after day, week after week, passed on my return to Geneva; and I could
not collect the courage to turn on my sequencer and recommence my work. I feared
the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance
for the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not compose a remix without
again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. I had
heard of some discoveries having been made by an English music producer that bore
then name, DJ Scud, knowledge of which was material to my success, and I sometimes
thought of obtaining my father’s consent to visit England for this purpose; but I clung to
every pretence of delay and shrank from taking the first step in an undertaking whose
immediate necessity began to appear less absolute to me. My health, which had hitherto
declined, was now much restored; and my spirits, when unchecked by the memory of
my unhappy promise, rose proportionately. My father noticed this change with pleasure,
and he turned his thoughts towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my
melancholy, which every now and then would return by fits. In those moments I took
refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat,
watching the clouds and listening to the first releases of Rephlex and Planet Mu. Those
albums, along with the fresh air and bright sun seldom failed to restore me to some
degree of composure; and, on my return, I met the salutations of my friends with a
readier smile and a more cheerful heart.

24
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 145.
 95

Økapi
In the wild sampling black forest that daft giraffe commonly referred to as
Økapi struts about tuning a 100+ elements orchestra, all of which ruthlessly plundered
to celebrate the notorious Kyrgyz composer Aldo Kapi (1896-1952) whose more recent
works (1927-1952), sitting between break-NOT-core, experimental turntablism and
bubble-gum audio are presented in these 12” releases volume 1 and volume 2.
Aldo Kapi (Kyzyl-Suu 12 September 1896—Cholpon-Ata 11 May 1952), Kyrgyz
composer. Son of an Iranian industrialist Agha Mirza Kapi and the Italian Elena Bottero,
Kapi was initially destined for a career as a schoolteacher, and completed his studies in
the Orthodox abbey of Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan.”I dreamt I drowned in the lake”: Kapi
scribbled that early vision on a piece of paper at the age of 19. Unknowingly, he was
describing his eventual fate, the life he would lead in Central Asia, and also his attempted
suicide in Issyk-Kul.Kapi was unable to realize his dream of becoming a great pianist,
owing to the unwise experiments he undertook to perfect his technique during the
winter of 1910-11, which caused the loss of the use of his right ring-finger. He decided
to dedicate himself, instead, to composition. Introvert but often extravagant, his first
works were an attempt to break away from formal traditions and classical structures
that he considered too restrictive.During the decade spent in Bishkek, Kapi produced
his first noteworthy compositions, such as Sguadrezzi da pe’ (1914) and Pignottimi
d’approsi (1917). In 1920 Kapi passed the examination for the post of organist at the
Holy Trinity Church of Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, and decided to perfect his art among the
Tajiks of the Pamir, under the guidance of the Ismailist leader Aga Khan III, the maestro
of Taimur Zulfikarov. This period saw his first meeting with Yvette Labrousse, (Miss
France 1930), Salah Eddine Ahmed Bokassa (emperor of the future Central African
Empire ), his 17 wives and Ruhollah Khaleghi (the first Persian sound-designer, from
Kerman, Iran) as well as written works, such as the three great Messe tragicomiche
and Kapi’s first proto-plunder-orchestral pieces. In 1923 he was nominated Professor of
Harmony, Vako Orchestron and Optigan at the conservatory of Dushanbe in Tajikistan.
However, while he attracted a large body of devoted students, in Dushanbe he also faced
hostility from Morteza Hannaneh (founder of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra and the
Afghan king Mohammad Nadir Shah (then France’s ambassador in Afghanistan). Their
opposition culminated in the poor reception given to his Terza Sinfonia Pooch-poem in
1926, after which Kapi returned to Kyrgyzstan. Recognition came only later, after a long
96

period of patient revision of his work. In 1928 he was awarded a university chair and his
Fourth Romantic Symphony (Death of Henry II) and Fifth Symphony (Love him) were
finally performed in Dushanbe. He then went on to “conquer” Samarcand (Uzbekistan)
and the American poet and critic Ezra Weston Loomis Pound, who lavished praise on
his Bud-Dub. After reconciliation with Mohammad Nadir Shah, the University of Kabul
awarded Kapi a doctorate honoris causa.In the early 1950s, despite pleasant vacations in
Oubangui-Chari (now the Central African Republic) along with the writer and Nobel
Prize winner André Gide (guests of the future dictator Bokassa), the symptoms of his
mental instability, evident in the past, worsened. He was forced to resign his post and
attempted suicide. Confined in the Kurort Jergalan asylum at Karakol, he lived for only
a further two years, with only occasional flashes of lucidity.While composing his sixth
symphony, Kapi’s condition worsened. He worked on feverishly in a state of visionary
delirium, and died while revising a draft of Finale (“…the next!”) in 1952.

“Love-Him Vol.2 Early (1914-1926)” by Økapi and Aldo Kapi’s Orchestra (-Belligeranza 06)
 97

13.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr25

Having parted from my friends, I determined to visit some remote spot of

Scotland and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt that the monster followed me
and would reveal himself to me when I had finished, that he might receive his remix.
With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands and fixed on one of
the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of my labour. It was a place fit for such work,
being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten by the weaves.
The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal
for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs were
evidence of their miserable fare. The whole environment reminded me of the eerie
atmosphere of such video games as The Labyrinth of Time or the area to be restored
in biological life and nature colours in eco video games like Flower. On the whole
island there were three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when I arrived.
This I hired. It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the
most miserable penury. I bought some furniture, a new pair of studio speakers and
took possession, living finally unmolested. I devoted the morning to labour; but in the
evening, when the weather permitted, I walked on the sun-drenched beach to listen to
some vaporwave records: the heavy use of layered and altered chopped and screw-style
samples from 1980’s and 1990’s music made up a scene that was monotonous yet ever-
changing. This “ambient music” of the new millennium was definitely more about
aesthetics than sound so I imagined I was walking on a chequered floor beach, and
under boiling solar rays I even had a mirage of Renaissance sculptures scattered here
and there and tried to decipher road signs written in non-Western characters as the
waves roared and dashed at my feet.

25
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 157-158.
98

Bolognoise Ain’t A Sauce

For Spaghetti But Bologna’s
Soundscape Pt. I

Skank Blok Bologna26

Why Bologna and not Berlin? Because it’s a shithole (with interesting echo
and resonance effects, thanks to the widespread existence of arcades). The sonic
psychogeography feeds itself on mediality: the life of an average European city, of an
average population, of average size; an average advanced tertiary sector, with average
infrastructures; average levels of ethnic integration; and an average forecast of socio-
economic development. The sound of a “tiro” (electric doorbell opener) at 4.35 p.m.,
on May 23, 2011, at Santa Viola district, just past Maggiore Hospital, on the right,
Drzzz Drzzz! The sound of a remote controlled opening system in Prague, on May 23,
1922, “Please take a seat, I understand your repeated requests to talk to an experienced
professional, Doctor Kafka has indeed been at the services of the ‘Insurance Institute
Against Work Injuries for the Bohemian Reign’ for at least 15 years, and in fact,
after a brief experience at the General Insurance, he joined our company, occupying
that small office at the end of the corridor. Doctor Kafka says it’s the only one in the
building from which you can’t hear the noises coming from the street.” Why Bologna
and not Barcelona? Because the sonic mapping doesn’t need any artistic community
elaborating other systems and models of coexistence, the daily course of urban noise
refrains from them, just as Franz Kafka the insurer does. The stimulus of daily routine,
of banality, of averageness, there’s no need for the hype of New York, Frisco and so
on, psychogeography operates just outside of Mazzini Street. It doesn’t necessarily
seek originality, the specific acoustic resonance of a certain territory is not a sine qua
non, and it’s not about recording the echo of the Himalayas during the autumn solstice
from 3,000 metres above, nor has it anything to do with art, but just with mapping
and documentation. We therefore do not put under our lenses the metropolis, not a
sprawl, but an average city, comfortably within our observation slide, and hence the
research will maybe come to some conclusions which will then be the beginning of
further research, and so on. Why Bologna and not L.A.?

26
The title of maybe the most militant album by Scritti Politti, released in the tense mood of the end of the 70s in England, where
the Emilian model was considered one of social experimentation.
 99

Luigi Russolo, “The Awakening Of A City”, 191327

Right at the awakening of the 1900s, 1913, probably the deepest intuition of
the sonic potential of the urban centre took place. A composition defined as “a spiral of
noise”, whose original score for intonarumori and rumorarmonio has been lost: various
intonarumori together, lead by keyboards and pedals similar to harmoniums. The
futuristic homage to the industrial city, to the speed of its times, to the frenziedness of
movements to which it forces its inhabitants, to the deafening noise of the factories, all
condensed into a composition of 3 minutes and 58 seconds, amid the rolling of assembly
plants, moaning sirens, combustion engines, chainsaws and assorted sounds of springs,
even soundscapes sounding somehow watery (could it be a mechanical port?). The
sound is cast towards the future, as stated in the title itself, photographing the moment
of departing, the commencement of the working day, the “industrial breakfast” of
the city at the beginning of the century, the same intention traced by the Floyds after
more than 50 years, with a much more relaxed menu, in “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast”.
The importance of Russolo and of his seminal for the history of mankind “L’Arte dei
Rumori” (“The Art of Noises”), is without precedent. The text is the ultimate expression
about noise of all time, and that is how it will always be, in so far as it is pointless to
write others, beginning with this one, which should terminate HERE. (And everyone
should be looking up the endless bibliography about “The Art of Noises”, yes, with the
Anglophone title since most importantly it is edited by the University of… here and
there in almost all of the most prestigious departments in the US and almost entirely
unknown in Italy, just as all the best things of “il Bel Paese” [Italy], land of immense
unconsidered cultural treasures). Then, exactly 41 years after…

B. Maderna And L. Berio, “Ritratto Di Città” (1954)

“It is very difficult to explain how and why it happens. It is also very difficult to
surprise it, to discover it. I’m obviously yanking about that minute, or that hour, or that
second, it doesn’t really matter, in which at every single new awakening in the morning
the city finds itself entirely, suddenly and with surprise, covered by silence.” These are
the opening lines of “Ritratto di città”, the radiodramma which intends to give back the
awakening of the early light of dawn to Milan, where the action, the figurative aspect, is
received through Roberto Leydi’s text. You who listens, try to imagine yourself watching
all of these images on a television screen, in black and white perhaps: deserted streets
at dawn, canals, courtyards, solitary peripheral osteries (pubs), fog, offices, the business
world, the one of nightly desires, everything, as in 1972, Angelo Paccagnini writes,
27
See the last paragraph of “BOLOGNA’S SOUNDMARK”.
100

“inside the snorting and bristly electro-concrete score of Berio and Maderna it becomes
clearh”. More exactly gifted with a meaning, even without any need for onomatopoeic
recalls, which are never lacking anyway: the uproar of a morning tram, the nightly
mews of cats on the roofs and so on. Created with whatever was available inside Rai’s
Milan studios, the piece belongs the to early days of the Phonology Studio which would
be conceived only a year after. “Ritratto di città” is the acoustic portrait of the Milan of
1954 which, together with Pais and Cologne, constituted the most vital stronghold of
the new music. By the use of a groundbreaking sound description utilizing concrete
and electronic sounds, a prepared piano, fragments of album recordings and Cathy
Berberian’s voice, “Ritratto di città” contributed to the widening of radio’s sonic horizon
and represented a meaningful example of the passage from the radio-drama world to
the new world of electronic music. Despite the participation in the 1955’s Prix Italy, the
work was presented only as an experimental piece outside of the competition. The main
aim was to show RAI’s high ranks the possibilities of the usage of technology within
radio. From that moment the history of Milan’s Studio di Fonologia begins. “Ritratto
di città”, sonic comment by Lucian Berio and Bruno Maderna, Nando Gazzolo and
Ottavio Fanfani (voices).

We Stay In Milan!

“Milan doesn’t sound like Tokyo or New York, nor does Lagos or Shanghai. It
doesn’t even sound like London, Dublin or Barcelona: a short visit, a stroll or even just
a taxi or bus ride through these cities, is enough to understand that. Some differences
are quite and immediately clear: the acoustic signals used by each town to regulate itself
and communicate, such as the sirens of emergency and police vehicles, the crosswalks
device beeping at the traffic lights, the electronic advertisement, the audio signals on the
public transport. Likewise, each town is distinguished by peculiar sounds reverberating
from some of its particular and unique places. In Tokyo and in many Japanese cities
it could be the streets ringing from millions of steel marbles roaring in the Patchinko
halls, punctuated by the automatic doors opening and closing; in Italy, even in Milan
and despite the traffic noise, it could be for instance the constant and loud bawling of
women in streets markets, drowned only by the pedlars’ shout. In Shanghai it could be
the sound of the cricket markets, which you can still come across in the older districts,
withstanding the forced acceleration of the urban development, far from tourists and
businessmen routes; in Lagos, it’s the low and constant chaos of voices, yells and music
of street trade, which you definitely can’t mistake for a street or a cricket market.” “It is
however much more difficult to become aware of other differences; maybe of the firm
low traffic noise, which is anyway everywhere to be found, which does have its own
 101

intensity, but also a tone and rhythm diverse from city to city (depending on the different
traffic density? On the different rhythm of its flow? Different car fleets?); likewise, there
must be something different in the hum of people talking in the streets, in the different
composition of language overlapping which constitutes that mélange, shouted or barely
whispered depending on the situation.” “On the other hand, if we’d just listen a little
more carefully, we’d notice that even Milan itself doesn’t sound all the same: there’s a
difference between the centre, between the porches surrounding the Duomo and its
wide square and the small towns that constitute its peripheral belt and are currently
being absorbed in the urban fabric—how will their sound change when they’ll be
part of the conurbation? The shopping streets sound different from the nightlife and
entertainment functionally specialised districts, from the town logistics junctions,
from the business districts. Each of these sonic environments is linked to the others
that surround it in a most particular way: sometimes you can hear them cross-fading
into each other, sometimes it’s enough to take a side-way street to experience a sharp
change in the sound landscape.” 28

R. M. Schaefer Lecturing: Pay Attention!

The process of “sonic sprawling”, meaning that of a hyperexponential

multiplication of acousmatic sources derived from the Industrial Revolution
onwards, has dramatically mutated and complicated the sonic landscape and its
traditional perception. Nature’s hi-fi, without any psychoacoustic mastering, had
almost been wiped out by the ceaseless lo-fi noise of the assembly line before, and
then by the “tentacular cable broadcast 24/7” of the: city > metropolis > megalopolis
(in rigorous order of urban development). This socio-anthropologic mutation of the
acoustic sphere, this overabundance of sounds in the contemporary world, has made
a new grammar necessary, a new language able to describe or just name the new
U.A.O. (Unidentified Audio Objects), the audio happenings overlooking our days
and our nights in the post-urbanoid sprawl. Fallen to a stage of sonic pre-puberty,
like children of an asylum of elementary frequencies (20-20.000 hertz), we sit at our
wooden desks, our bobs well combed, in our sweet school uniforms, and listen to a
hoary Mr Raymond, our teacher, in his late 70s, standing at the blackboard. To be
more precise, this is Raymond Murray Schafer, from Canada, who since 1977 [year
of the release of the seminal “The Tuning Of The World (The Soundscape)”, then
just re-edited as “The Soundscape” in 1994] has been drawing in colour chalk on
the blackboard (the one for important things!) the following, in no alphabetical
order, concepts, at the intersection between the acoustics of sound, sociology,

28
Simone Tosoni, Audioscan e scienze sociali, in Giorgio Sancristoforo, ed., Audioscan Milano, Milano: Postmedia Books, 2010.
102

environmentalism, musicology and literature:

KEYNOTE SOUND: In music, keynote identifies the key or tonality of a

particular composition. It provides the fundamental tone around which the composition
may modulate but from which other tonalities take on a special relationship. In
soundscape studies, keynote sounds are those which are heard by a particular society
continuously or frequently enough to form a background against which other sounds
are perceived. Examples might be the sounds of the sea for a maritime community or
the sound of internal combustion engine in the modern city. Often keynote sounds are
not consciously perceived, but they act as conditioning agents in the perception of the
other sound signals. They have accordingly been likened to the ground in the figure-
ground grouping of visual perception.

SACRED NOISE: Any prodigious sound (noise) which is exempt from social
proscription. Originally Sacred Noise referred to natural phenomena such as thunder,
volcanic eruptions, storms etc., as these were believed to represent divine combats or
divine displeasure with man. By analogy the expression may be extended to social noises
which, at least during certain periods, have escaped the attention of noise abatement
legislators, sounds such as church bells, industrial noise, amplified pop music etc.

SCHIZOPHONIA: (Greek: schizo = split and phone = voice, sounds): I first

employed this term in “The New Soundscape” to refer to the split between an original
sound and its electro-acoustic reproduction. Original sounds are tied to the mechanisms
that produce them. Electroacoustically reproduced sounds are copies and they may be
restated at other times or places. I employ this “nervous” word in order to dramatise the
aberrational effect of this twentieth-century development.

SOUND EVENT: Dictionary definition of event: “Something that occurs

in a certain place during a particular interval of time”. This suggests that the event is
not abstractable from the time-and-space continuum which gives its definition. The
sound event, like the SOUND OBJECT, is defined by the human ear as the smallest
self-contained particle of a SOUNDSCAPE. It differs from the sound object in that
the latter is an abstract acoustical object for study, while the sound event is a symbolic,
semantic or structural object for study, and is therefore a nonabstractable point of
reference, related to a whole greater magnitude than itself.

SOUNDMARK: The term is derived from landmark to refer to a community

sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or
 103

noticed by the people in that community. 29

SOUND OBJECT: Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of this term (“l’object sonore”),
describes it as an acoustical “object for human perception and not a mathematical or
electro acoustical object for synthesis”. The sound object is then defined by the human
ear as the smallest self-contained particle of a SOUNDSCAPE, and is analyzable by the
characteristics of its envelope. Though the sound object may be referential (i.e. a bell,
a drum etc.), it is to be considered primarily as a phenomenological sound formation,
independently of its referential qualities as a sound event.

SOUND SIGNAL: Any sound to which the attention is particularly directed.

In soundscape studies sound signals are contrasted by KEYNOTE SOUNDS, in much
the same way as figure and ground are contrasted in visual perception.

AUDIOANALGESIA: “that is, the use of sound as a painkiller, a distraction to

dispel distractions. The use audioanalgesia extends in modern life from its original use
in the dental chair to wired background music in hotels, offices, restaurants and many
other public and private places. Air-conditioners, which produce a continuous band
of pink noise, are also instruments of audioanalgesia. It is important in this respect to
realize that such masking sounds are not intended to be listened to consciously.”

SONIC SOUVENIR: The unique soundmark deserves to make history as

surely as a Beethoven symphony. Its memory cannot be erased by months or years. Some
soundmarks are monolithic, inscribing their signatures over the whole community.
”Whatever one may think of such soundmarks, they reflect a community character.
Every community will have its own soundmarks…” Let me mention a few originals from
my own memory: the scraping of the heavy metal chairs on the tile floors of Parisian
coffeehouse; the sound of the leather straps on the tram in Melbourne, Australia; the
virtuoso drumming of the Austrian bureaucrats with their long-handled rubber stamps:
ta-te-te-daa-ta-te-daa: the high-pitched brilliant bells of the horse-drawn taxis in Konya,
the last to be heard in any major town in Turkey.” “The world is full of uncounterfeiting
and uncounterfeitable sound souvenirs such as these, indelible memories for the aurally
sensitive tourist, and always in need of protection against replacement.”
DRINNNN, the bell again, the Sonic Landscape class is dismissed!

29
The landmark is a sound characteristic of an area and it is what makes the acoustic life of a certain community unique: the
steeple of Salvador Mundi in Salzburg, the Stadshuset Carillon in Stockholm, the Big Bang of London. In Florida’s capital the battling
of gastric bass coming from guerilla Hi-Fi soundsystems of custom-built cars, windows lowered, have even given an actual name
to a genre, the Miami Bass or booty music, sort of an electro characterized by pulsating beats, hyperkinetic rhythm, and often with
explicit sexual connotation in the lyrics, widely appreciated by listeners of Southern (and sometimes Nothern) hip-hop.
104

Versus

Schafer’s theory on sonic landscape has established itself as a fundamental

reference for any analysis of the sonic experience within a given context, as to justify the
provocative image of the “primeval alphabetization” staged in the previous paragraph.
Yet, since the 1970s many other theoretical devices have been sharpened, mostly by
“resonating” with the concepts of “The Soundscape”, through an updating/sharpening
in consideration of the developments coming from the single disciplines constituting
the cross-cutting corpus of the studies on sonic landscape, but at times even in open
cognitive dissonance, or, by playing with the title of the text under discussion, in open
“Sonic Guerrilla” with them. Of all of this Schaferian pars destruens which we cannot
fully treat here, one of the most penetrating contributions comes in fact right from
the blessed essay on sound, on the interactions with human perception and on the
ecology of fear, precisely entitled “Sonic Warfare” by Steve Goodman. In paragraph
8, “Sonic Effects”, Goodman widely focuses on Jean-Francois Augoyard and Henri
Torgue’s work in the field of urban ecology of sonic effects. On the premise that any
sonic perception bears within itself a surplus of emotional factors (from the ability
of creating amazement and wonder, to of course terror and physical shock), the two
French-Canadian theorists proceed to a “vibrational” analysis of the experience of
the city: “as a sound exists on a physical level, it makes a physical space vibrate”. 30
According to them, the fixed categories of the sonic object, meant as a minimum
perceptive unit of the auditory experience, and the sonic landscape as a macro-
category descriptive of the totality of the auditory vibration, are both inadequate.
On the contrary, Goodman theorizes the “sonic effect” as an open concept, a new
paradigm on an analysis that places itself between the cause and the sonic event: “The
effect is not an object itself. Just think about how neither the noise nor the sound
change on a physical level in the Doppler effect; it is the relationship between the
observer and the emitting object that changes, when one of these two elements moves
at a sufficient speed… thus the effect doesn’t just indicate a cause, but it is the actual
mark of a sound… the context following the object and its own appearance… the
perceptible effect is directly connected to a circumstantial cause.” 31 Augoyard and
Torgue are basically plunging the sonic event in an ocean of vibrational effects, from
which the duality of subject and object emerges, and in fact “the sonic effect, at times
measurable, and generally linked to the physical characteristics of a specific context,
couldn’t be simplified neither on a objective nor on a subjective level. The concept of
sonic effect seems to describe this interaction between the physical sonic environment,

30
Jean Francois Augoyard and Henry Torgue, Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds, Montreal: McGill-Queens
University Press, 2005.
 105

the audio milieu of a sociocultural community and every individual’s interior sonic
landscape.”32 Ultimately, a radical revision of Schafer’s concept of the sonic city
“as a musical instrument possessing passive acoustic properties”, but rather “a sonic
instrumentarium of urban environments”33 : playing the city through the relationship
between its architecture and our inner self, modulating its vibrational aspects. The effect
within an experience of pure audio, rather than within a sonic object, will consist of a
relational experience between what we experience, the context in which we experience
it, and our experiential self, and at last the body, in a multi-effect unit which functions as
a vibrational transducer of urban sonic experiences, opposed to the Schaferian listening
subject who is instead antithetical to the context in which it places itself and isolated
from its own sonic objects.

31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
106

14.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr34

As I proceeded in my labour, it became every day more horrible and irksome

to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter the studio for several days,
and other times I toiled day and night on my sequencer in order to complete my work.
It was indeed, a filthy process in which I was engaged. During the first mastering
session of my new remix, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had deafened me to the horror
of my employment; my mind was intently fixed on the lame breaks, and my eyes
were frozen on the tracker I was using to produce the new sonic wretch. But now I
went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands. Thus
situated, employed in the most detestable and trashy music production of humankind,
immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the
music tools with which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal; I grew restless
and nervous. Every moment I feared to meet my persecutor. Sometimes I sat in front
of my speakers with my eyes fixed on the cables running through the floor of my
miserable studio, fearing to raise them lest they should encounter the object which I
so much dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from the sight of my fellow producers
lest when alone in an illegal rave party in the forest he should come to claim his remix.
In the meantime I worked on, and my labour was already considerably advanced. I
looked toward its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not
trust myself to question but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of sonic
evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom.

34
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 158-159.
 107

Bolognoise Ain’t A Sauce

For Spaghetti But Bologna’s
Soundscape Pt. II

Sonic Fiction On Schafer’s Blackboard?

Life in the post-urban sprawl pushes our perfection to an acoustic routine

as well. The cycle of work, free time, public transportation, causal occurrences, and
the boundless range of events orchestrated by the pulsating material and immaterial
general intellect causes in fact a series of actions with specific “resonance” qualities,
which constitute our daily sonic landscape. It could similarly be objected that the
same happens for the rural life, whose day, as the proverb says, commences with the
rooster’s crowing and ends with the crickets’ chirping. The most obvious difference
is that in the case of the lo-fI reproduction of the tentacular 24/7 cable-broadcasting,
the level of the psychoacoustic masking is at immeasurably higher levels than
that of the natural hi-fi’s purity. Now, I ask myself if the concept of sonic fiction
could be taken into account in order to describe the succession of artificial sonic
events constituting our daily life. This conceptechnics, or better, paraphernalia of
conceptechnics, owes its birth to the Afro American conceptual engineer Kowdo
Eshun, who, in his work “More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures In Sonic
Fiction”, refers to it on several occasions, the most effective of which might be in the
“Motion Capture” interview, in which he explains: “But the main point is that I’m
trying to bring out what I call the Sonic Fiction of records, which is the entire series of
things which swing into action as you have music with no words. As soon as you have
music with no words, then everything else becomes more crucial: the label, the sleeve,
the picture on the cover, the picture on the back, the titles. All these become jump-off
points for your route through the music, or for the way the music captures you and
abducts you into its world. So all these things become really important. So a lot of the
sources of the More Brilliant are from Sleevenotes, they’re the main thing. A lot of the
book talks about Sleevenote artists. It talks about the guys who did the cover for those
Miles Davis records, this guy Mati Klarwein, another guy Robert Springett, who did
the cover for Herbie Hancock’s early 70’s album. There’s different interfaces between
different Sonic Fictions, between the title and the music. Hendrix would say: “What
I’m doing is painting a sound.” And you can say reversely with the Sleevenotes. The
reason the Sleevenote pictures capture you is because there’re a sounding in paint. If
you listen to them, you imagine them as weird visions conjured up through the music.
108

It’s really strange”. 35 Before this, referring to Underground Resistance, inside the book
itself: “In UR, a constantly proliferating series of sonic scenarios take the place of lyrics.
Sonic Fictions, Phonofictions, generate a landscape extending out into possibility space.
These give the overwhelming impression that the record is an object from the world it
releases. This interface between Sonic Fiction and track, between concept and music, isn’t
one of fiction vs reality or truth vs falsity. Sonic Fiction is the packaging which works by
sensation transference from outside to inside. The front sleeve, the back sleeve, the gatefold,
the inside of the gatefold, the record sleeve itself, the label, the cd cover, Sleevenotes, the cd
itself; all these are surfaces for concepts, texture-platforms from PhonoFictions. Concepts
feed back into sensation, acting as a subjectivity engine, a machine of subjectivity that
populates the world with audio hallucinations.”36 “The Latin etymon fictio, fictionis,
as per “imagination”, translates well the idea of this literary/visual world, parallel and
at the same time an integration to the music as aforementioned, but by translating it
into the Sonic Fiction or Phonofiction concept, whatever you may think of it, I feel
that it provides a strong reference to the succession of events as well as to a plot, just
as narrative has taught us to appreciate (even in its times of strongest avant-guardist
protest, and here I’m thinking about Robbe-Grillet and Perec, authors of provokingly
eventless novels): in short, to fiction, as an unravelling of events. By bringing back this
idea to the discussion on audio, and to be more precise, by applying it not as much
as to music and discography as done by Kodwo Eshun, but to the sonic landscape,
I wonder if a conceptechnics like sonic fiction could be useful to the identification
and analysation of the audio routine to which everyone is subjected in the context
of a post-urban agglomeration: the production day (and that of the abstention from
production too) of contemporary societies is in fact characterised by a precise signage
of artificial jingles from digital alarm clocks, the iPhone’s switch on, the elevator’s
ignition, the sonic macrocosm of the metro etc… Everyday we experience such a
ritual iteration of given sonic events, at given times, exactly specular to the routine of
events imposed on us by work (but by abstention from it too), that we can consider this
succession of phono-particles as the unravelling of a fiction, a sonic fiction to be more
precise, which substances our daily audio-perception and which, by interconnecting
itself in moments of social interaction to other individuals’ perception, contributes to
the creation of the sonic landscape of a given community, in a given place. The sonic
landscape therefore is the result of the total unravelling of the countless sonic fictions
in existence in the post-urban agglomerate. In this way, could it be useful to add the
concept of Phonofiction to the previously introduced blackboard in R.M. SCHAFER
LECTURING: PAY ATTENTION!?
35
Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant than the sun, London: Quartet Books, 1998, p. 178.
36
Ibid, p. 121.
 109

Other Additions (Earworms & Deja Entendu)

The term “earworm” comes from the German ohrwurm, an infective

acoustic vector, and literally refers to the worm, or better, to auditory worms.
As Steve Goodman explains,37 “the earworm is the captivating tune that you just
can’t get out of your head, the vocal refrain, the infective beat or the addictive
riff. There’s a great variety of species of earworms, travelling at different speeds
through the epidemiological field of the sonic culture.” In the vanguard of the
ethological research on these wormlike species is branding psychologist James
K. Kellaris, whose widely recognised contribution Dissecting Earworms: Further
Evidence on the “Song-Stuck-In-Your-Head” Phenomenon38 analyzes in depth
the effects of an apparently harmless snatch of music sticking itself in your
brain and refusing to leave. Kellaris claims that worms of the hearing cause a
concrete neurological disorder which he defines as “stuck tune syndrome”, and
he also deals with “mental mosquito bites” referring to the typical viral way in
which certain music genres spread. In a situation of audio ubiquity as the one
defined in the concept of tentacular cable broadcast 24/7 typical of the sonic life
of contemporary megalopolises, the proliferation of phono-infections is in fact
extremely high. But let’s see how, according to Kellaris through Goodman, 39 the
audio-viruses act: the earworm creates a “cognitive itch whose nuisance can be
eased by scratching, i.e. by repeating the tune in your head. And the more the
mind scratches, the worse the itch gets”. In practice, pop music is obviously the
quintessential source of virological engineering techniques for the abduction
of the collective audio subconscious. Just to name one among endless other
possibilities, Kyle Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, released in 2001,
is the epitome, both in its lyrics and in its refrain which gets stronger as the
voice gets higher and higher, of this transplantical attitude of auditory worms. Yet
beyond the plastic of commercial music, created in labs for infective purposes,
it could be meaningful to hypothesize a circulation of earworms even within the
artificial sonic landscape typical of contemporary societies. I’m not here simply
referring to a fragment of the umpteenth “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” bootleg
remix casually heard while waiting for a street light in Miami to turn green, just
before the cars sprint, with lowered windows towards the Florida coast, but also
to the “Mind the Gap” and “Stand Clear of the Door” of the London Tube, to the
37
Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2010, p. 147.
38
The essay is introduced in Christine Page and Steve Pasavac, ed., Proceedings of the Society for Consumer Psychology, New
Orleans: American Psychological Society, 2003, pp. 220-222.
39
Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2010, p. 146.
110

rumble of Mah-Jong in Hong Kong, to the rattling of veal meat in restaurants

serving schnitzel in Essen, Germany, quoted by Schafer. In addition to the sonic
landmarks, beyond community characterizing sounds, are those sounds which we
could define as jingles ad personam: the digital alarm clock, the audio following
the iPhone’s switch, the sound coming from a given elevator system, and so on, all
of these sounds are charged with their own vitality. All of these sonic universes,
both the personal ones and those typical of specific communities, find in the serial
iteration to which the systematic organization of our productive day subjects us,
a strategic point of audio-bombardment, which is actually not so different from
pop music’s advanced marketing observatory.

Of course, we don’t have to deal with catchy tunes which you can’t get
out of your head, vocal refrains, infective beats or addictive riffs, but I believe that even
apart from melodicity, the repetition constituting the main principle of the morphology
of music and without which there would be no musical form IS the ground of the process
of sonic memorisation (even unconscious) and therefore it is through this audio-routine
to which we are forced in the contemporary world, the earworms taking over our brain
can pass. These worm-shaped forms of life can slightly mutate, following for example
how our daily schedules and engagements (and most of all around the corollary of audio-
events connected to the latter) carried out within a day, or can dramatically mutate when
we change city, re-establishing a new seriality of sonic occurrences, according to the new,
different sonic landscape. This way, can the earworm’s conceptechnics be also useful within
the context of the study of the (post-) urban sound? Again, according to Goodman,40 “the
power of the earworm is not limited to its being contagious. When the audio viruses
resonate in the host’s body, they can cause a feeling of temporal anomaly.” Referring to
the auditory worms, Goodman also claims: “They seem to possess the ability to settle
themselves through a timeless ad infinitum repetition, where distinctions between the
past, the present and the future are constricted and get in contact with each other. The
earworm penetrates like a Trojan horse creating a temporal anomaly.” Gobé, in a chapter
of his “Emotional Branding”41 had already analysed the potentiality of the audio meant as
a time machine, awakening sonic memories buried in the collective or personal imagery,
and tele-transporting the sensorium into previously lived emotions and feelings. I’m
referring to a sonic parallel of the feeling of déjà vu, which Goodman in fact defines as déjà
entendu. This conceptechnics too can be important within the context of sonic landscape.
Once again, let’s think about the change of residency: the sounds of the urban agglomerate
which have for years gone hand in hand with us, lie buried in our audio-imaginations

40
Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2010, p. 149.
41
Marc Gobé, Emotional Branding, Oxford, Windsor Books: 2003.
 111

and are awakened in the twinkling of an eye (usually together with a series of extra-sonic
emotions tied to a specific situation in the past) by the first evocative sonic reference. It
is the “already heard”, therefore as a Proustian phono-madelaine capable of recreating a
world through a fleeting sound, stored in the cerebral cortex. Walter Benjamin probably
was the first to point out the specifically auditive nature of memory, in the short chapter
“A Participation of Death” in his Berlin Childhood: “Much has been written on the déjà vu.
But is this expression the most appropriate? Shouldn’t we talk about circumstances which
hit us as an echo, whose pristine sound seems to have been emitted in some dark recess
of a prior life? After all, it is a fact that the shock with which an instant presents itself to
our conscience as “already experienced” mostly hits us in the likeness of the sound. It
is a word, a crackle or a vibration, upon which the power of enrapturing us in the icy
tomb of the past whose vault seems to be bringing us the present back as an echo, has
been bestowed.”42 The human sensorial databases is thus like a sort of Jamaican school
echoic chamber proceeding by delays as in dub, stretching over within the riddim: the
sonic act is echoed for years and years, until a sudden repetition of itself through a sonic
stimulus analogous to the original one makes a whole past world emerge in the shape
of remembrance, which from the auditory limitation proper of the original agent flows
into the synaesthetic. In many ways, Benjamin’s childhood exiled from Nazism is a sonic
childhood, as well as a Berlin one: the noises from the zoological garden (most of all the
otter), the sound of his first telephone, that of the doorbell at Blumenshof 12 (which,
further in the book, is revealed to be that of his grandmother’s house), the creaking of
the playground’s merry-go-round, the banging of jam jars stirred inside the cupboard by
his stealthy child’s hand, and many other paragraphs revolving around the story of the
origins of the modern age through Europe’s capitals, to which Benjamin dedicated the
last fifteen years of his life. Berlin Childhood represents a fantastic examination of déjà
entendu, indissolubly bound to the urban space, so much that it seems to be giving credit
to my idea of the sonic déjà vu “resonating” with soundscape studies.

“Dammi Il Tiro Che C’e’ Il Fontaniere Ed

Intanto Porta Giù Il Rusco....”

(“Open up that the plumber’s downstairs and bring down the trash-bag…”) : BOLOGNA’S SOUNDMARK 43

Bolognoise, or Bulgnais, if you prefer its dialect version, is an online sound

archive that bla bla bla… STOP. Just like any other city, Bologna too sounds in its
own unique way. In what its specific acoustic signature consists in is the archive’s
final task to inquire along with the exponential rise of the uploads on the platform.
42
Walter Benjamin, Berliner Kindheit und Nuenzehnhundert, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1950.
43
Idiomatic expression in Bolognese.
112

This paragraph does thus not exist, the sounds in which the bolognoise community
recognizes itself were hosted on bolognoise.org, and describing them is of no use
at all, no synaesthesia is possible. It may be worth reporting in this context the first
elements that come to my mind that have an “acoustic implication”: the arcades, for
sure; they are a characteristic element of the city’s architecture, which coil around
it for 38 km, and that’s just its historical centre, it doesn’t even include San Luca’s
arcades, counting 666 arches (300 from Saragozza to Meloncello and 366 from
Meloncello to the church), therefore the longest in the world (almost 4 km). All of
these will influence the local soundmark with plays of echoes and delays, just as the
il tiro (“the pull”) will…
Any wanderer visiting the city will probably be caught a bit off guard, baffled,
by the voice coming from the entry phone, answering: “Ti do il tiro” (literally, “I’ll give
you a pull”). The expression, typical of the area of Bologna, simply means to open the
door (the main door), therefore to open the main entrance by triggering the mechanism
allowing the door to open. But where does this expression come from? The centre of
Bologna is famous for its arcades and old buildings, which on the ground floor were
once equipped with a big door allowing the horses to enter the inner cloister. The
apartments being on the first floor, the incoming guest would either have to knock on
the main entrance or ring a bell in order to announce himself, and to do so one had
to physically pull a string to trigger the opening mechanism of the door below. Hence
the term “dammi il tiro”, referring to the actioning of the string. In time customs have
changed, but don’t be surprised if inside the hall of an apartment building you find two
switches, marked as “LUCE” (light) and “TIRO” (pull).

Bottom line: this is more a linguistic custom referring to a sonic occurrence

rather than a single proper sonic occurrence of its own. Then the peculiar phenomena
of diagonal voice transmission—telearchitecture?—through the four corners of
the vaulted ceiling of Podestà, just there by Piazza Maggiore, but this is no tourist
guide, so does it really make any sense to go on with this list of places and bizarre
phenomena, especially when the most comprehensive answers are there, in mp3
format, on BOLOGNOISE.ORG? This paragraph is the online platform itself.
 113

15.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr44

I sat one evening in my music studio; the sun had set, and the moon was
just rising from the sea: I had no sufficient light to work on my sequencer, and I
remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether I should leave my session for
the night or hasten its conclusion by an unremitting attention to it. As I sat, a train
of reflection occurred to me which led me to consider the effects of what I was now
doing. Three years before, I was engaged in the same manner and had created a horrid
mashup of incongruous music genres whose unparalleled barbarity had made even
the bravest (and junkiest) of ravers dash off. I was now about to form a remix version
of it; it might become a thousand times noisier than the original track and destroy
every sound system in the world. The risk of creating an entirely new music genre
from the two music blobs seemed distant but not entirely unattainable. I had no idea
of how the music critics could name this Sound Frankenstein… But I knew that a
race of audio-devils would be propagated upon the earth that might make the species
of man’s very existence a precarious one and full of music terror. Had I a right, for
my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? I had before been
moved by the sophisms of the music wretch I had created; I had been struck senseless
by his fiendish sub-bass threats; but now, for the first time, the wickedness of my
promise burst upon me; I shuddered to think that future generations might curse me
for being the inventor of this appalling hyper-mashup.

44
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 160-161.
114

SONIC FRANKENSTEIN
PT.2

Afro-EBM, audio-meme, neo rave mazurka, urban nihilism, post industrial

funk, drum’n’noize, retro-electro/ electro-retrò/ electretro, drone’n’roll, power-ragga,
death-samba, IDM (with ‘I’ as in ‘intramuscular’), poltergeist dub, skacid, armageddon-
electro, crossbreed, atmospheric speedcore, no-step, dub spencer & trance hill,
alkaemic trance, 1-bit music, drill’n’polka, anoise, intelligent gabber, schrillstep, SDM
(stupid dance music), no-core, advanced hip hop, robot-ragga, new age whale song,
industrial moombahton trival, speed reggae, 4-bit riddim, cumbia’n’bass, latin ethereal,
hard zenonesque, spaghetti terror, martialreggaetone, balkan ambient, occult death rap,
christian harsh wall noise, grind batucada, onkyobilly, ghetto no-input mixer, down
tempo j-core, snap music, boogie schranz, bassline extravaganza @genremasher a bot that
creates new musical subgenre, a cappella extratone, fourth world crust, dodecaphonic
posse, fingers snapping, gangnam style da camera, pitbull grindcore, IDM (with ‘i’ as in
‘inhalant’) avant soul, oi eurodance, moshpit micromusic, space doo-wop, future garage,
witch house vs Schlumpf tekno, lounge dark jazz, new jack swing, progressive swing,
crunkcore, ritual grime, goth flamenco, wasabi blues, B&R, rhythm’n’chill, mafioso rap,
juggalo gospel, PVC (power violence capoeira), screamo folk, UK bossanova, kebap
minimal, acid beatboxing, nu liscio, #seapunk, grave wave, mutant country music,
psychedelic chiptune, unplugged juke, booty ambient, ambient bird sounds, miami
baile, tropical metal, low-fi afrobeat, fidget house, complextro, doomduro, glitch batida,
abstract soca, dubstep rondo’, skweee, glam tech, emo electroclash, kraut-bubblegum,
jawaiian, bolero new romantic, concrete tango, cockgaze, manouche bruitisme, klezmer
gabba, merenrap, wonky, apolkalypso, tinnitus dub, apocalypso disco.
 115

8BIT xxxStraight-Edgexxx??? Directly from the anti-drugs campaign via video-games sponsored by FBI in the ‘90ies.
116

16.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr45

I knelt on the grass and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed: “By
the melodic vocals of the grooviest house music, by the most self-conscious minimal
house, and by the ravers wounded by the Sonic Belligerence, I swear to pursue the audio-
blob who caused such terrible hearing loss, until it or I shall perish in a mortal sound
clash. For this purpose I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will I again
behold the sun and tread the green herbage of the most different teknivals. And I call on
you, spirits of both techno and tekno, to aid and conduct me in my work.”
I had begun my abjuration with solemnity and awe, but the furious sound of
a speedcore kick drum possessed me as I concluded, and choked my utterance: I was
answered in the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish sampled laugh. It rang in my ears
long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed it, and I felt as if all sonic hell surrounded
me with mockery and laughter. That devilish tone died away; when the well-known and
abhorred voice, apparently sounding through a vocoder, addressed me in an audible
whisper: “Pitiful tekno-head, the cross-genre of audio-blob, the Sound Frankenstein is for
real now!” Then tiny fragments of Gregorian chants, cheap gabber, Gypsy jazz, klezmer
accordions and extratone filled the night with the most dreadful of sonic quagmires.

45
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 196.
 117

Belligeranza’s Rotpourri
A non-comprehensive selection of reviews from the press

Year 2000: all tracks’ duration 3 minutes 33 seconds, skits’ duration 33

seconds 30 milliseconds, all frequencies cut at 33.3 hertz, beats reaching the peak
of 333 BPM and, of course, 33 ⅓ RPM. Full of numerological obsessions, the LP
(out in September 2000) is split into Serious side (experimental breakcore, furious
industrial drum’n’bass) and Comical side (art/speedcore). Samples come from
the cult Hammer House of Horror movie The Devil Rides Out (Fisher, 1968) and
from Salò, o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Pasolini, 1975). Side A is at 45 rpm, with
A1 being a noise piece setting our music expectations; A2 is a hard-hitting hybrid
breakcore/dnb. The unusual nature of the sounds used comes through on side B: a
really wicked track with all the right elements, B2 delivers screeching and screaming
noise frequencies to pierce your ears and B3 is a weirdly abstract downtempo track
concluding this excellent record with ferocity. Released at the end of 2006, this is a
record that never wears thin and sounds amazing on a bass-heavy sound system!
Combining provocative critique and killer dancefloor tracks, Kovert demonstrates
that noise and the reinterpretation of hard dnb coming out of Freak Obscene etc.,
can be powerfully combined. Check OTOSCRATCH, THE ULTIMATE WAX
TO REMOVE THE WAX. Otoscratch includes a collection of breaks, scratch and
Italexploitation to remove even the toughest wax in your ears. Don’t take my words
for it folks, TRY IT!”

Has the planetary muzak deposited a layer of wax in your ears?

According to recent studies in physiology of sound, an extended exposition

to audio-valium experience such as Goa trance (the last crime against humanity!),
sleep’n’bass... sorry I meant drum’n’bass tun cha tun cha tun cha and zombie hard-tekno
causes the formation of a layer of wax in the ears of the listener. Not to mention other
dangerous expressions of planetary muzak like that newly forged grime, what is it? Ask
some trendy music mag wanker or sound-art, that is I put a jack up my asshole and listen
to its minimal vibration PRRRRR... this is so interesting, a pre-modern deconstruction
of tone theory, but you must wear spectacles to fully appreciate this avant-gardism.

Do you want to take possession of your faculty of hearing once again? Are
118

you tired of this partial perception of the sonic world induced by the audio-valium?
Try brutality at its best with a storming release by ZombieFleshEater! Full of distorted
Amen breaks, abusive noise and bizarre vocal samples, A2 features ragga vocals while
A3 frenetically mixes screeching sirens and guitar riffs and A4 is a descent into noise
hell. Side B continues the exploration into the even more varied and extreme.

It takes a lot of courage to release extratone on vinyl, and who else would
do it other than the legendary DJ Balli? If you are familiar with any other Sonic
Belligeranza releases, you will know that they specialize in picture discs, and this
one just looks delicious. The concept of this vinyl is exploring twitter posts with
extratone. The vinyl starts with a vocoder transformer voice that introduces the
concept, together with bird samples, and then it hits you hard in the balls and does
not let go until your ears are bleeding. This is not for the faint-hearted. Sometimes it
seems like your brain is melting, but then a sample comes in that brings your back for
a brief moment into reality... though not for too long. This has to be seen and heard
and treated with respect. This is probably the answer to the question: “How does
Twitter sound?” What??? A Rastafari painting crosses on his hands!!! And then a
Straight-Edge doing weed?!?! Representing this oxymoron is the sound contained on
Sonic Belligeranza 04, a bizarre clash between mid-tempo industrial breaks, powerful
ragga riddims and Bolognese polka. Hey, don’t forget the 8 round bonus of Bolognese
polka-core included in the vinyl! DEDICATED TO FRANCO BALLI.

A whacked out 7” picture disc here, comprised of two extremely unusual

pieces. The first uses skateboarding sounds as source—ollies, rail, grinds, everything—
cut and spliced into big groaning chunks of noise and gruel. It’ll make every dog
within three miles sit up and slobber. The flip is similar, but has more voices mixed in,
making it sound like some weird Italian documentary at times. Dastardly stuff, lemme
tell ya. Around the fire, ravers and boyscouts gather at sunset to listen to music VERY
different from the innovative breaks, the stupid-step and the out of tempo Amen breaks
contained in this EP. Ravers ain’t nothing but the other side of the coin of boyscouts,
they both go to the wood and follow Christian Distortion.................. Let’s kick them
both with the soundz!

A bizarre release, and therefore right in the line with the sublabel’s intent to
bring out noise and ideas. A1 by Balli mixes some intense noise with samples of all
sorts for a typically jarring effect. A2 by Bruital Orgasme contributes minimalistic,
subtle noise, kind of reminiscent of certain old Hands Production releases. A3 by Zr3a
tests some shrill frequencies while A4 by System Hardware Abnormal creates a pretty
 119

freakish rhythmic entanglement. All the tracks are mashed up in a megamix on side
B for pure mayhem. And one can’t fail to notice the picture-disc image of a 4 seasons
pizza on the A-side and pizza crust on the B-side. Weird! In the short story “The Great
China Wall” Kafka tells that this colossal work had been accomplished through the
piecemeal system, exactly the same technique used by SANDBLASTING to produce
“El Paso Sound-Wall”: a 100% synthetic improv of post-industrial drones assassinated
by sonic stabs that reveal a solid experience in the live-act field. Then, as in a patchwork,
the sounds of the improv become literally ‘raw material’ to build 5 other power-
electronic assaults (chiNOISErie) characterized by original research on sound’s grain
and by a pernickety structural organisation—noisician as oriental porcelain craftsman.
The stuff that comes out on DJ Balli’s Sonic Belligeranza label and various sublabels
is so far-out in the extremes of electronic music that I’m not sure that any of this
stuff is even close to being describable as “dance music”, though I’m sure that the
maniacs behind outfits like ZombieFleshEater, Micropupazzo and Balli himself would
be quick to disagree. With what may be either the most ridiculous or the coolest
concept for a compilation to show up on this weeks Blastlist, Extreme 8 Bit Terror
is the latest collection of weirdo electronic music from the Sonic Belligeranza label
out of Italy. Featuring multiple tracks from Italian chiptune/breakcore/experimental
noise producers Mat 64, Pira 666, Micropupazzo and DJ Balli, this collects a bunch
of cover versions of both old and new songs from the realm of classic heavy metal,
thrash metal and grindcore along with some experimental original pieces done in
“8-bit” style, the songs transformed into bleeping, chirping electronic melodies like
something off an old Nintendo or Amiga video game. There’s a certain kind of geek
who digs this kind of thing, and I’m one of them: there’s something nostalgic about
listening to these primitive electronic versions of old metal songs from the ’80s and
’90s. All of these new transformations and arrangements are surprisingly complex
though, and each one of the contributors offers a different approach to their mashup
of metal riffage and 8-bit glitch. Mat 64’s virtuosic “Iron Maiden Medley” seamlessly
brings together a bunch of classic Maiden tunes into a five minute power anthem,
and listening to this, it’s really striking just how similar Iron Maiden hooks are to the
sort of action music that programmers developed for old video games from the late
’80s. There’s some Maiden-homage from Pira 666 too, but it is sandwiched in between
weird versions of Regurgitate’s “Waging War” and Napalm Death’s “Malicious Intent”,
both of which feature gruff harsh vocals and blasting drums, ending up sounding a lot
like Dataclast. Plus, Pira’s 666 version of Maiden’s “Ides of March” ends up sounding
almost like something off of an Italian horror movie soundtrack. Micropupazzo
is the least “chiptune”-based artist on the record; although there’s elements of that
8-bit electronic vibe woven into the covers of songs by Bulldozer and Vanadium and
120

someone named Richard Benson, each song becomes a barely recognizable mashup
of evil squelchy synths, fractured gabber rhythms, endless wailing guitar solos, and
bizarre robotic vocals. // And DJ Balli is last, with a rather killer cover of Slayer’s
“War Ensemble” that gets outfitted with programmed drumming, strange android
vocals, and warped breakbeats, giving a vague speedcore quality to this new version.
He then closes with the “8 Bit Metal Manifesto”, a spoken word track that sounds like
the demonically possessed computer from Evilspeak invoking 8-bit pandemonium,
which I fully endorse: “We drink the vomit of the priests / on our color TVsss / We make
love with the dying whore / through Commodore 64 / We suck the blood of the beast /
pushing the floppy in the disk / And hold the key to death’s door / with our keyboard…”
Definitely something to check out if you dug the Xexyz album on Suffering Jesus,
or Dataclast’s 8-bit grindcore blasts…. Rock’n’roll is that which creeps through our
spine and makes us move our ass, bang our heads, and stretch our arms out to throw
the goat, YO!!! Trying to capture, vivisect, and distil the essence of this primordial
instinct, DJ Balli plotted The Pure Spirit of Rock’n’Roll, a mix cd and a sampler of the
best music released by his label Sonic Belligeranza between 2000 and 2005. You can
dance to it if you want to!

Two empty tape-recorders, one connected to the other, no sound if not the
distortion produced by the tape-recorders themselves in play/rec. On this recording
of Nothing the modulations of vintage analogue effects: emptied frequencies, prenatal
sounds without any sonic grain, audio excerpts for a flat electroencephalogram.
The selection of the technical set-up through which sounds are produced is part of
the N. (Nihilism, No, Not, Never...) aesthetics: THE PROCESS IS THE POETICS
in “Memories From Before Being Born”, a possible conceptual-noize manifesto. Is
there any difference between smashing a window of a bank and producing distorted
frequencies and broken beats on carpets of pink noise? French sonic vandal Slaaam
(Peace Off rec., L’Art et la Guerre rec.) doesn’t think so and Skank Block Bologna EP is
the best demonstration of this assumption. A five tracker varying from ultra-kinetic
breakcore on syncopated tempos, to rhythmic clusters of organic noise that question
previous conceptions of industrial music, to end with locked grooves of Jamaican
horns “executed” by DJ Balli and N with power-electronics bruitisme. To Black
Block we’d rather prefer Skank Block...... Anything else to declare? Tamtamtam. Let’s
synthesize some plastic that is natural! This is exactly what Mutant Milly does with
ultra-codified genres like electro and funk, resurrecting them in such an artificial way
that sounds surprisingly fresh and spontaneous in his Natural Plastic EP. A collection
of very short tracks in between mobile phone ringtones, improbable jingles and stupid
media audio ads, showing a deeply extravagant approach towards composition.
 121

One of the several picture discs that recently came in from the Italian
glitch/noise/splattercore label Sonic Belligeranza, the Four Seasons Pizza 12” is
a compilation of face-shredding electronic noise from the Italian underground
that’s presented via a ridiculous pizza-themed concept. There’s four different
artists featured on the record: DJ Balli is the guy behind the Belligeranza label as
well as a prolific producer of extreme electronic noise and experimental breakcore;
the Bruital Orgasme duo combine random noise, field recordings, synth and
turntables among a myriad of other instruments to create their abstract/drone
noisescapes; the unpronouncable Zr3a has previously released stuff on Grindcore
Karaoke; and Stefano Di Trapani’s System Hardware Abnormal is but one of
the many electronic underground noise projects from the Rome based artist
Micropupazzo. On the first side of the record, each of these four artists delivers a
single track of pure harsh noise beginning with DJ Balli’s “Col Fischio O Senza?”
(Mushroom Remix); this track is blasting Merzbowian noise cut-up with Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons, cartoonish laughter from Alvaro Vitali’s Italian Z-movie hero (the
title of the track itself quotes a famous sketch from this trash actor), scattered
throughout the ultra-abrasive electronic carnage. Would definitely appeal to fans
of the more maddening, psychedelic Government Alpha. That’s followed by Bruital
Orgasme’s “Pizza Concrete” (Artichoke Mix), a slightly more subdued harsh-
noise track that blends in dark droneological rumblings with abrasive feedback,
swooping electronic effect and bursts of savage distortion. Zr3a also delivers a
harsh-as-hell electronic assault on “Pichi Pichi Gal” (Sasauge Mix) that again
reminds me of the fast-moving chopped-up violence of Government Alpha, and
last is System Hardware Abnormal, who unleashes high-pitched squealing tones
and chaotic chirping noise à la Bastard Noise on “CiNapoli” (Raw Ham mix).
The flipside of the 12” basically takes all four of those tracks and has them mixed
together into an entirely new composition, hence the whole “pizza ingredients”
concept. Titled “Enjoy Pizza Bokassa Kill Kill” (4 seasons megamix), this is
densely layered noisescape filled with rhythmic mechanical chirping and harsh
fluttering distorto-drones, rapidly chopped-up blasts of over-modulated noise,
piercing tone fuckery, crazed shrieking vocals and weird background tape sounds.
Later evolving into a total whiteout of crushing electronic noise that ends up
dropping into some locked-groove style rhythm towards the end. It’s abrasive as
hell, and pretty much for harsh electronic noise junkies only… “Hard electronics
Blaxpoitation” can be a good description of DJ Balli’s contaminated hip hop/
dancehall rhythms and ripped noise shards. Working exclusively with skateboard-
generated sounds here, the Italian’s noise-poisoned breaks use a combination of
turntablism, sonic manipulation and “vinyl infringement”.
122

Asparagus for dinner tonight! Then everyone at the party... FFF, the Dutch
“breakcoreagogoer”, is playing his ragga poisoned with hooligans trumpet and country-
western flavour and his more experimental beatz hysteria along with Albania’s Bombolo
Blues Band, a tribute band named after the Italian trashy actor (www.bombolo.net),
offering a mixture of hard breaks, yodel and Alps chorus. At the end of the party, we
will all meet in the toilets for an unusually smelly piss! The green as a huge “wheel of
steel” on which to perform turntablism, the CLUBS and the HOLES as XXX and XXX
(we’re talking porno-golf, aren’t we?). A collection of breaks, swings, scratch-FX, irons,
rounds and aces for your golf trolley/records bag, an essential 12” to strike the balls in
the hole in one shot! This record is meant to be USED, not just listened to...... Uptempo
to downtempo grooves to ignite the Funk Engine, a variety of scratch FXs made
rhythmic, some elements of loopology organized in 4 rounds, weird guttural sounds
from Italian Z-movies legend Salvatore Baccaro, nothing else but an horse as MC in one
track and more jingle-scapes, a panoramic view on the Italian TV tunes buried in the
NATION’s imagiNATION… All of this exhuming from all the rest of the “music” by
the “infamous” turntablism band known as “DJ Balli is the Wrong Nigga to Fuk Wiz!”
People in the streeeet say I look like Billy Corgan but I’m not Billy Corgan, I’m BALLY
CORGAN, I don’t do poetry, I do my horribleeeee noizes………. Once again—after the
successful “333 BPM”—DJ Balli and Mu B dive again into their own personal audio-
alchemical researches, “transmuting” broken-up beats, white/pink noize and distorted
frequencies into social warfare. And the result is the “Transmutations EP”, a solid five
tracker that shows a great variety of approaches to break/speed/strangecore along with
a great care in production. All vocals samples in the record are taken from the legendary
movie “The Tingler”, by William Castle (1959). In order to fully appreciate this 12”, we
would advise you to go and see it or at least get some info about it on the web so you’ll
understand why listening to the “Transmutations EP” you may feel a “strange tingling
sensation”........... WARNING: In case you experience the aforementioned symptom,
SCREAM AS LOUD AS YOU CAN!!!!
 123

Sonic Belligeranza Discography

Sonic Belligeranza

DJ Balli & Mu B DJ Balli & Mu B

Serious And Comical Investigations At Around 333 bpm (12”) Transmutations EP (12”)
S.B.01 (2000) S.B.02 (2001)

Slaaam DJ Balli
Skank Block Bologna (12”) Straight-Edge Rastafari Manifesto EP (12”)
S.B.03 (2003) S.B.04 (2003)
124

FFF / Bombolo Blues Band KovertPressure

The Smell Of Urine After Eating Asparagus E.P. (12”) Sound EP (12”)
S.B.05 (2004) S.B.06 (2006)

Zombieflesheater DJ Balli
Zombieflesheater (12”) Boyscouts-Ravers Must Die! (12’’)
S.B.07 (2006) S.B.08 (2007)
 125

DJ Balli / Micropupazzo / MAT64 / Pira 666 DJ Balli / Ralph Brown

Extreme 8 Bit Terror (12”) Tweet It! (Extratone Mix) (12’’)
S.B.09 (2011) S.B.10 (2012)
126

- Belligeranza

Mutant Milly & Commodore 16 DJ Balli Is The Wrong Nigga To Fuk Wiz!
Natural Plastic Plastic (12”) From The Inside (12”)
[-BEL.01] (2004) [-BEL.02] (2005)

DJ Balli Is The Wrong Nigga To Fuk Wiz! DJ Balli Turns Into The Right W.A.S.P. To Play Golf Wiz!
Otoscratch The Ultimate Wax To Remove The Wax (12”) Introducing Pornogolf (12’’)
[-BEL.03] (2006) [-BEL.04] (2007)
 127

Okapi & Aldo Kapi’s Orchestra Okapi & Aldo Kapi’s Orchestra
Love-Him Vol.1 Recent (1927-1952) Okapi Plays The Music Of Love-Him Vol.2 Early (1914-1926) Okapi Plays The Music Of
Aldo Kapi (12”) Aldo Kapi (12”)
[-BEL.05] (2009) [-BEL.06] (2009)

Ottaven / Aquarius Ω Rancid Opera

A4GOD (12”) Azionismo Bolognese in Rap (12’’)
[-BEL.07] (2012) [-BEL.08] (2016)
128

+ Belligeranza

Sandblasting DJ Balli Is The Wrong Nigga To Fuk Wiz!

El Paso Sound-Wall (CD) Memories From Before Being Born (CD)
[+BEL.01] (2003) [+BEL.02] (2005)

Various DJ Balli
The Pure Spirit Of Rock’n’Roll (CD) In Skatebored We Noize!!! (7’’)
[+BEL.03] (2006) [+BEL.04] (2007)
 129

DJ Balli / Bruital Orgasme / Zr3a / System Hardware Abnormal Bally Corgan

4 Seasons Pizza (12”) Bally Corgan (12’’)
[+BEL.05] (2009) [+BEL.06] (2009)
130

17.
ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr46

Alas! The battery of the Game Boy I relied on is gone; I feel that I shall soon
die, and he, my music enemy and sonic persecutor, may still be in being. During
these last days I tried to reset LSDj, the software I used to father such a frightful
audio-blob, and I refused—and I did right in refusing—to create a remix version of it,
and therefore generate a proper music genre, that of mashup. My tenacious rejection
has led him to destroy many rave-party devotees: tekno, Goa trance, drum’n’bass,
dubstep, even ambient music fans... The task of his destruction was mine, but I have
failed. I ask you, dear reader, to fulfil this duty and eradicate the Sonic Belligerence!
In this hour, when I momentarily expect my release, a strenuous concern disturbs
me: That the sonic wretch might continue to undermine the strict categorisations of
music genres. Farewell, dear reader! Seek happiness in a 4/4 house loop and avoid any
audio-ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of hyper-composition,
that is to say creating irreverent tracks from a multitude of different music sources.
The turntable became slower, going from 45 to 33 RPM... the needle itself began to
skip because of the stack of dust, until the eyes of Dr. Frankenstein closed forever,
while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips.

“I have devoted my creator to misery; I have pursued him even to that

irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death like frozen food. I look on the hands
which used a humble Game Boy to grind the most incompatible music genres, from country
music to the obscure Japanese Onkyokei, from ragga to the Alpini choirs, from polka to grave
wave, and so forth... Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future music mischief. My
work is nearly complete. I shall die. I shall no longer be seized by audioschizoid attacks,
nor surpass the hearing range that is audible by humans again. He is dead who called me
into being: Farewell Dr. Frankenstein! You did seek my extinction, that I might not cause
greater wretchedness to illegal rave parties; yet, the worst revenge did come from my very
own existence, and from the sufferance caused by the awareness of being such a wretched
audio-monstrosity. This, you never understood!” He sprung from the tiny
screen as he said this, upon the ice-craft which lay close to the vessel. He
was soon borne away by the waves and lost in the darkness and distance
that remained as a permanent screensaver on its monitor...
46
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin 1992, pp. 196.
131
132
 133

CONTENTS

9 A forward to further experiments from MidiEvil Bologna.

23 Author’s Introduction

27 Letter I
29 Letter II
31 Letter III
32 Letter IV
39 1
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
40 HOW TO CURE A GABBER PT. 1
45 2
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
46 HOW TO CURE A GABBER PT. 2
49 3
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
50 LEBENSBORN: MASHUP vs HYPER-MASHUP
52 4
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
53 SKATE/AKTION N. 23 - WIENER SPAZIERGANG 2015
56 5
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
57 YOU SPIN ME ROUND (LIKE A PIZZA)
60 6
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr

62 EXTRATONE: Interview with Ralph Brown 2013

68 7
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
70 The Animal Musicians

76 8
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
78 STRAIGHT OUTTA BEL PAESE
82 9
.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
134

83 THE HISTORY OF PANZERSCHOKOLADE/MEDICAL HAKKEN

86 1
0.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
87 SONIC FRANKENSTEIN PT.1
89 1
1.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
90 BALLY CORGAN
94 1
2.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
95 ØKAPI
97 1
3.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
98 Bolognoise Ain’t A Sauce For Spaghetti But
Bologna’s Soundscape Pt. I
98 Skank Blok Bologna

99 Luigi Russolo, “The Awakening Of A City”, 1913

99 B. Maderna And L. Berio, “Ritratto Di Città” (1954)

100 We Stay In Milan!

101 R. M. Schaefer Lecturing: Pay Attention!

104 Versus

106 1
4.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
107 Bolognoise Ain’t A Sauce For Spaghetti But
Bologna’s Soundscape Pt. II
107 Sonic Fiction On Schafer’s Blackboard?

109 Other Additions (Earworms & Deja Entendu)

111 “Dammi Il Tiro Che C’e’ Il Fontaniere Ed Intanto

Porta Giù Il Rusco....”

113 1
5.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
114 SONIC FRANKENSTEIN PT.2
116 1
6.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
117 Belligeranza’s Rotpourri

123 Sonic Belligeranza Discography

123 Sonic Belligeranza

126 - Belligeranza

128 + Belligeranza

130 1
7.ShelleyBot@MaryShelleyfr
 135

+5 Antibothis, vol. 4 -1 Scorpio Rising: Transgressão Juvenil, Anjos do

Selected texts by FERNANDO CERQUEIRA Inferno e Cinema de Vanguarda
Chad Hensley, Polly Superstar, Crimethinc, Z´ev, Trevor Brown, ONDINA PIRES
Raymon Salvatore Harmon, Ewen Chardronnet, Joe Coleman, Carl Esgotado
Abrahamsson, Júlio Mendes Rodrigo, V. Vale (Re/Search), Robin
Rimbaud, André Coelho, Christoph Fringeli, DJ Balli, Adolf Marx,
Joe Ambrose, Mason Jones CD compilation curated by Phillipe Petit -2 Bestiário Ilustríssimo
Scanner & Sci-cut.db, Bela Emerson, Israel Martinez, PAS + If Bwana, RUI EDUARDO PAES
The Stargazer’s Assistant, Michel Banabila & Philippe Petit, KK Null, Esgotado
Cindytalk, Machinefabriek, Xambuca, Mark Beazley. Cover: André
Lemos. -3 ”a” maiúsculo com círculo à volta
RUI EDUARDO PAES
+4 Chthonic: Prose & Theory sobre Música e Anarquia.
VADGE MOORE Ilustrações Ana Menezes, André Coelho, André Lemos, Bráulio
Sold Out Amado, David Campos, Daniel Lopes, João Chambel, Joana Pires,
José Feitor, Jucifer, Marcos Farrajota.

+3 ANTIBOTHIS, vol. 3
Selected texts by FERNANDO CERQUEIRA
-4 Bestiário Ilustríssimo II - BALA
John Zerzan, Earth First, Chad Hensley, Ewen Chardronnet, Iona RUI EDUARDO PAES
Miller, Joe Ambrose, Nigel Ayers, Socialfiction, Frank Rhyne, sobre Música e Multimedia.
Randal Pyke, Adi Newton and Jane Radion Newton (Clock DVA) Ilustrações David Campos e Joana Pires
CD The Master Musicians of Joujouka, Lydia Lunch with Philippe
Petit, Checkpoint 303, Kal Cahoone, Gintas K, Orbit Service, Anla -5 Maga: Colecção de Ensaios sobre Banda
Courtis, Stpo, Zeitkratzer, Jane Radion Newton and Adi Newton /
T.A.G.C., Pietro Riparbelli/ K11, Gjoll. Cover: André Lemos.
Desenhada e afins
Editado por CLUBE DO INFERNO
Ana Matilde Sousa, João Machado, João Sobral, Marcos Farrajota,
+2 ANTIBOTHIS, vol.2 Tiago Baptista. Ilustrações Tiago da Bernarda
Selected texts by FERNANDO CERQUEIRA
Erik Davis interviews Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey), Carl -6 Evan Parker : X-jazz
Abrahamsson, Magus Coyotel Leyba, Vadge Moore, Chad Hensley ANDRÉ COELHO
Interviews Boyd Rice, Center For Tactical Magic, Critical Art Esgotado
Ensemble, Antero Alli, Brian Dean, Andrew Mckenzie, Stefan
Szczelkun, Orryelle, Aesthetic Meat Front And Vincent Alexzander.
CD O Yuki Conjugate, Controlled Bleeding, Orryelle, Aesthetic Meat
-7 Anarco-Queer? Queercore!
Front, Enkidada (Psychik Warriors Ov Gaia), Cotton Ferox, Hybrids, RUI EDUARDO PAES
Strings of Consciousness and MILF (Bourbonese Qualk). Cover: sobre Música Queercore.
André Lemos. Ilustrações e grafismo Bráulio Amado, Astromanta, Hetamoé, Joana
Estrela, Joana Pires e Rudolfo. Capa Carles G.O.D.

+1 ANTIBOTHIS, vol.1
Selected texts by FERNANDO CERQUEIRA -8 Corta-e-Cola / Punk Comix
Gx Juppiter Larsen, Kenji Siratori, Corrupt, Pentti Linkola,
AFONSO CORTEZ E MARCOS FARRAJOTA
Iona Miller, Socialfiction, Jorge Mantas, Edgar Franco, Wulf
Sobre Discos e Histórias do Punk em Portugal (1978-1998) | Banda
Zendik, Adel Souto, Sztuka Fabryka, Denny Sargent, Ordo
Desenhada e Punk em Portugal
Antichristianus Illuminati And Alex Birch. Spoken word/oral
cut up CD Jarboe, Fernando Ribeiro, Kenji Siratori, Phil Von,
Christophe Demarthe, Rasal.asad, Euthymia, Wildshores,
Andrey Kiritchenko, Netherworld, Rapoon, Planetadol,
Thermidor, Structura, Martin A. Smith and Alex Tiuniaev.
Cover: André Lemos.
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RICCARDO BALLI
(Bologna, 1972)
Riccardo Balli a.k.a. DJ Balli is a DJ/producer, and founder of the label Sonic
Belligeranza. A true fundamentalist of Breakcore since year zero of this
non-genre of music, as the style was getting more and more codified, he
progressively tried to personify its attitude and even bring it outside of audio
realms. Hence following the motto of M(C)ary Shell8Bit “Every cacophony
is possible, infect the Underground!”, the creation in his lab a la Bolognese
of Sound Monsters such as skateboard-noise, gangsta-opera and his
infamous poetry readings pretending to be Billy Corgan from The Smashing
Pumpkins. Riccardo Balli is also active as a writer: “Anche Tu Astronauta”
1998, “Apocalypso Disco” 2013, “Frankenstein Goes to Holocaust” 2016, all
in Italian, this is his first full-length book in English.

RUDOLFO
(Porto, 1991)
Hyperactive artist that has been drawing comics,
screaming loudly, breaking marble tables while
playing chiptune versions of Limp Bizkit’s Break
Stuff and everything else in between, since his
own glitchy conception. Was published in several
Chili Com Carne anthologies, like QCDA #1000,
and has the solo book Muschechoo — Trump Card.
photo by Ana Ferraz
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1818 First edition of Mary Shelley’s classic: Frankenstein
140
2018 Frankenstein gone mad: the many horrifying uses of technology, such as Web 2.0 that encourages you to give
your time and personal information up to faceless IT companies or worse...

This book is a mashup of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, videogames and Internet culture, of chiptune
music, galvinism, taffelmuzik, real life accounts of ‘90s gabber rave parties in Italy and a celebration of
Bologna’s finest weirdo label SONIC BELLIGERANZA, whose 17 years of existence (2000-2017)
this volume celebrates with 17 texts.

All written by Riccardo Balli who, having whistled countless 8-bit versions of famous pop songs
and delighted his ears with chiptune covers of black metal songs and classical music, now extends
micro-music aesthetics to literature with this remix of Mary Shelley’s classic.

Through some sort of low-resolution séance, the author evokes the spirit of corpse reviver
Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834), credited with having inspired The Modern Prometheus.
Aldini tells a compressed version of the original Frankenstein story, exposing
its language to retro-gaming jargon and simplifying the plot as if it were
an arcade game. The aforementioned 18th-century electrifier was the
nephew of eminent scientist Luigi Galvani, who lived in MIDIevil
Bologna just like the author of this new classic.

Send him an impulse from your Game-Boy!

BLEEEEEEEEEEEP!