Express and The Soft Machine. These books were essentially made up of the same content, just reordered and shuffled around. And even Burroughs’ most well known work, Naked Lunch, was assembled for publication in cut-up fashion. Interestingly, after Ginsberg persuaded Maurice Girodius of Olympia Press to publish it, he ended up with only a week to assemble the raw material. As a
result, they employed a sort of “cut-up division of labor” with various people typing up different sections, which lent a more than a little bit of refreshing randomness to the whole editing process. You often see this today in science fiction or in spy movies, like in the Mission Impossible series, where someone has a large database of bits of recorded speech that is used to create an artificial
conversation by pulling someone else’s words out of context. But what these scenes really show us is that the single voice is really more of a composite of our social experiences; a multitude of voices speaking through us. While it may have seemed far-fetched back in the day, now, with our plethora of automated interactions, we have conversations with robots on a regular basis. ~
Left and previous page: Cut-up, self applied. From the William S. Burroughs Papers, 1951–1972 in the New York Public Library. Reprinted in Cut-ups, Cut-ins, Cut-outs: The Art of William S. Burroughs, p. 94 - 95.
“Now it’s the grown-up version!” Daniel Jones recommends Lauren Bousfield’s Avalon Vales Ask the average person on the street and they’ll probably say they have a favorite band. For me, this is almost impossible: the variables of taste shift far too frequently. But, somewhere deep amongst the crud and wobbly stuff inside me, I keep a little crystallized shard that says ALWAYS LOVE U. In that shard, four words: Nero’s Day At Disneyland, aka Lauren Bousfield. To listen to an album by Lauren—formerly Brock Bousfield—is to hear a symphony deconstructed, chopped into bits and put back together into cartoon devils that wheeze and lurch, yet somehow never lose their sense of beauty. Bousfield’s early work drifted wonderfully close to punk, with his debut LP Attention Shoppers essentially an ADD-addled extension of his other collaborative project Strip Mall Seizures. His would later go on to abandon his spastic vocal stylings to explore more symphonic and experimental compositions, though they never lost that mutant edge. His latest work, Avalon Vales, sounds perhaps closest to a sonic ideal. It’s certainly his most beautiful work to date. What makes Bousfield’s music so captivating is how he recon-
ceptualizes the way we might think to listen to songs. For example, when you imagine a choir, you’re likely to think of it as a vocal focal point in a chorus. In contrast, Bousfield employs it instrumentally, opting to make the shrill, whirling, synths and breakbeats the song’s true voice. Avalon Vales once again showcases his deft manipulation of chamber music samples and the chaotic catchiness of his original song structures, as well as—for the first time since his debut—his sensual yet innocent vocals. The result is the very definition of angelic: beautiful, mysterious, asexual, frightening and holy. About six years ago, I was in a synthpunk band. You don’t need to know the name—we weren’t big. We were named after a Virgin Prunes song, for God’s sake. Still, I had the pleasure of playing with a lot of cool bands, including Amitai Heller’s pre-Water Borders project New Thrill Parade, Sixteens, and SWFT WNGS—now Bestial Mouths. We even got to play the infamous leather club The Eagle, which has sadly closed. Our finest moment, however, was playing with Strip Mall Seizures in a big punk house in Oakland. The following is a written excerpt
from my tour diary, dated 2007: White Slave Trade show had gang violence; six shots fired not ten feet away from us, twelve more after we ran inside. No deaths! Listened to Snoop Dogg after, felt like a shrimpy sissy. Got to Oakland around 1:30 p.m., venue turned out to be this huge, awesome house full of anarcho crusties. Rode bikes with a photography kid to get amazing burgers. Dug a hole with a guy with breast implants, turned out to be a dude from Coughs, and played with big dogs in the dirt. Met Judy, Brock and Matt from Strip Mall Seizures, who are all amazingly nice people and ultracool. Coughs guy played noise in the hole as Carezza for five minutes; which made me happy and excited. We played a good show, with slime and eggs and bunny ears. The synths sounded mad chunky. George, who played with Marfa and Ne-af in Prague showed up randomly, didn’t know we were gonna be there. Long talk with Brock. He complimented my Poison Girls shirt and turned me on to Frog Pocket. Ate an oyster from a bonfire, bounced on a huge trampoline with dogs and made freestyle raps. Strip Mall Seizures played. Best show
(Vale Records)
Daniel Jones is a music promoter and creator of the subculture reconceptualization & aesthetics tumblr formerly known as Gucci Goth, now Black Black Gold. Since 2011, he’s also been a staff writer and editor for electronicbeats.net
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