EX! Zine and Compilation

interview, release

The third issue of EX! magazine is now out on Adventurous Music. It includes material/interviews by/with Andrew Backhouse, Camila Piana, Chantelle Gray, Chrystal Cherniwchan, Corina Retzlaff, Crunch Pod, Eleonora Kampe, Exosoma, Kate Bosworth, Loid, Lydia Yakonowsky, Manuel Carbone & Thierry Arnal, Maroulla Simmonds, Moritz Fasbender/Friederike Bernhardt, Stephano Loiacono and more – plus an interview with me.

It also includes music/book recommendations, early experimental musicians, a selection of favorite tracks or albums by Kate Bosworth and Disorganism, and a 12 song digital compilation.

The print version (Book/Magazine, out in September) includes the 96-page zine (printed climate-neutral on recycled paper), the digital compilation, and a download code for an exclusive album by Substak.

Crudeltá Necessaria

release

Limited edition tape, releases February 7, 2025 on Karlrecords.

Recorded in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, 2023-2024. Sound design fragments from Pasolini’s films Edipo Re (1967), Porcile (1969) and Medea (1969) were recorded to ¼-inch tape loops and appear throughout these selections.

The world (another word for society) is cruel in a banal sense: unjust, brutal and segregating. Life under capitalism is the generalized and global form of this cruelty, organized by the logic of abstract labor and alienation. But cruelty also carries a different meaning, one that has resonated with a few artists of the 20thcentury who positioned themselves against the cruel banality of their times. Cruelty in the sense of mercilessness or remorselessness, both a realism and a necessary stance in a battle against an overly powerful enemy. Antonin Artaud’s conception of the theater of cruelty exemplifies this stance, an „appeal to cruelty and terror […] whose range probes our entire vitality, confronts us with all our possibilities“ (The Theater and Cruelty). All our possibilities: an affirmation of radical difference. A similar posture, although it replaces Artaud’s mysticism with a communist viewpoint, can be found in the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Pasolini was a merciless analyst and critic of society under capitalist production. His answer to the banal brutality of capitalism was an artistic cruelty of his own design, a necessary cruelty which is evident in the films and texts that inspired these recordings. It is evident in the transformations and transitions of the novel-fragment Petrolio, it glares and screams from the screen in his films. You can hear it in the last and only words of the young cannibal in Porcile („I killed my father. I ate human flesh. I quiver with joy.“), in Medea’s curse against Iason („It’s useless! Nothing is possible anymore!“) and in the Sphinx’s desperate cry when murdered by Oedipus („It’s useless! The abyss you’re throwing me in is in yourself!“). It gazes through the masks of mythological and historical settings. It is evident in the almost violent way Pasolini edited his films, a form of Verfremdungseffekt that exemplifies his remorseless stance towards his audience, the spectacle of the film industry, fascism and capitalistic society. This necessary cruelty serves as a last line of defense in the political and artistic struggle against societal and political pressure. With this release I hope to capture at least a fragment of this demeanor.

New release: نه (no) on Brachliegen Tapes

release

New tape on UKs Brachliegen Tapes will release on November 1: نه (no) is dedicated to the Federation of Anarchism Era, an anarchist organisation active in Iran and Afghanistan. They organize(d) local struggles both in Iran and Afghanistan, translate and distribute anarchist literature and publish news on its website and various social media channels. Since 2021 they managed to help the escape of several people from the reach of the Taliban. On the local level, members of the federation participated in the uprisings in Iran after the murder of Mahsa Amini in police custody in Iran.

The groups organised in the Federation of Anarchism Era operate decentralised but united in the goal of fighting the fascist theocracies governing their respective countries. Internationalism, feminism, atheism and a pro-LGBTQ+ stance are indispensable parts of their struggle.

Since the groups organised in the Federation of Anarchism are at this point able to sustain themselves, they have closed all donations. Any non-monetary support is welcome. Get in touch, inform yourself, become part of the struggle. The logo of the Federation of Anarchism Era has been reproduced with their kind permissionProceeds will go to Solidarity Detainee Support, a grassroots abolitionist visiting group working to break the isolation of UK immigration detention.