information on the subject matter. Contemporary witnesses simply weren’t very willing to talk, and I really had to do some digging. To a certain extent, I was used to the research, as I had written my masters thesis on the Mafia. But now my intended result was an album, booklet and exhibit—not an academic work. What I was doing was not only historical but also, if not primarily, artistic and entertaining. I suppose that’s usually the case when it comes to tales of crime and intrigue. And that’s one of the reasons why I am so fascinated by Boardwalk Empire. The show’s vivid take on the twenties and thirties is almost vulgar in its hyperreality, fully committing to a detailed vision of “how things were”. The focus in the first three seasons is not only organized crime in Atlantic City before the Great Depression, but also the Mafia’s relationship to American politics—and specifically to former political boss Enoch “Nucky”
Thompson, played masterfully by Steve Buscemi and based on the historical figure Enoch L. Johnson. The series follows Nucky’s relationships to various underworld types and state and federal government agencies, painting a broad picture of the interconnectedness of these spheres of influence, as driven by Prohibition and corruption. Without a bedrock of morality, every character not only appears flawed, but is also constantly sidestepping an existential abyss of human evil in the byzantine political-criminal network—from the self-castigating, ultra-Protestant FBI agent Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon) to Nucky’s former mistress Lucy Danziger (Paz de la Huerta). In Boardwalk Empire, everyone’s guilty and all webs are intertwined. As Greil Marcus famously argued, there are two kinds of significant historical narratives, particularly in America: official history writing and oral history.
Boardwalk Empire is an excellent example of the intertwining of both, with the dialogue intimately portraying the thoughts and feelings of gangsters real, imagined and composite—not unlike William S. Burroughs creative interpretation of Dutch Schultz in the closet screenplay The Last Words of Dutch Schultz. While researching for Kosher Nostra, I conducted numerous interviews with Meyer Lansky’s driver to gain some insight into the gangster’s personal life. And even though much of the information couldn’t be independently confirmed, his stories and highly subjective perspective was the closest I could get to the source itself; and specifically to finding out about the songs that Lansky liked to listen to while in the car. Like The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire is an important step forward in the evolution of Mafia narrative, because with every season, it delves further into the psychohistory of the American dream. ~
Stefan Hantel, aka Shantel, is a DJ and producer best known for his Balkan electro-pop project Bucovina Club. Max Dax spoke with the Frankfurt native in the Summer 2011 issue of Electronic Beats about his meticulously researched compilation of American Jewish mafia music, Kosher Nostra.
“Think of your God, or lack thereof” Daniel Jones recommends Vatican Shadow’s Ornamented Walls and Silent Servant’s Negative Fascination Rome, October 19, 2012. I sit in the shadow of the Vatican, listening to Vatican Shadow. Those passing by either ignore me or stop briefly to glance at the pale kid dressed in black, sitting crosslegged and swaying to a rhythm they cannot hear. A woman screams at a man, her arm outstretched as he walks away quickly to the slow-churning pulse of “Cairo Is a Haunted City (Mythic Chords)”. A nearby Armani store vomits forth a bevy of bros. As they leave their spawning vat, one looks back toward the doorway yearningly. A single tear falls
from his eye, and by the time it hits the ground it’s already a diamond. I become aware of some aspect of myself changing; it’s some time before I realize what it is: I have become a fan of techno. As a post-goth, my formative tastes were shaped by a scene that, despite pretensions of openmindedness, is extremely rigid in a lot of ways (as are most subcultures). In the goth scene, there’s a lot of nonsense about designating yourself a certain kind of goth based on which kind of boots you wear or how much you like cats or elves or whatever. A goth
picnic is a bit like a comic convention, only slightly less depressing. One thing is for sure, however: if you’re a proper gothy-goth, you do not like techno. It’s illegal. There’s sort of a good reason for that. Most of the EBM that gets pushed at goth parties is, essentially, either Eurotrash hardstyle with bad goth poetry over the top or some jock in black covered in fake blood, making the same songs over and over about different swear words. Many goths refer to fast, repetitive electronic music of any kind under the blanket term “techno”, in the same way
(Modern Love)
(Hospital Productions)
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