Jan 22, 2005

Winter Music

Gloryfying in darkness, Dark Side understands that, like ecstasy, dread arises from a sense that former certainties are mutable. That's why horror texts, which belong to what James Donald has called 'the vulgar sublime,' speak most powerfully in times of unease.


Read: Page 1, Page 2

I'm sick. So I'm going to let someone else do the writing. Linked above is a piece on Dark Side written by Mar(k-punk) Fisher for the New Statesman & Society in 1994. Describing Dark's "displace[ment] of dread into celebration," Fisher posits horror as a more apt ontological frame than realism in a society spiraling into violent social decay. Conceptually, this is what I find most compelling about Dark Side - the way it ceded to the morbidity of the era, confronting darkness and celebrating through it, rather than despite it. I'd say America looks ripe for the spawning of its own Dark Side equivalent, but I won't hold my breath (more on that later). For now, at least, old time Darkness remains my soundtrack for the sensory hell that is winter in Ottawa.

"For all those who still don't know where they are..."

mp3 - Bay B Kane "Hello Darkness" (Remix)
For me "Hello Darkness" evokes alien logics and those shady creatures sensed but unseen around the edges of psychedelic states. It's like peeking into their carnival of the dark - distorted shadows bouncing in a cathartic marching dance. They chant and scream. Then MC GQ echoes in with an incantation/command. I guess if heard at the AWOL, this might be the moment when hallucination and physical environment would collide and shatter the ego into incommensurable bits.

mp3 - Rhythm for Reason "Music in Search of Light"

Er, this song's really good too.