audible seams in deliberate reaction to the Xanax Zone

[luka]

The people who bully me wear nice clean trainers so I will wear clunky boots.

I've never been happy with this.

 

[sadmanbarty]

our lens is xanex. our subject is now.

Alprazolam is a benzodiazepine (ben-zoe-dye-AZE-eh-peen). It affects chemicals in the brain that may be unbalanced in people with anxiety.Alprazolam is used to treat anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and anxiety caused by depression.

anxiety:

restlessness
a sense of dread
feeling constantly "on edge"
difficulty concentrating
irritability

dizziness
tiredness
a noticeably strong, fast or irregular heartbeat (palpitations)
muscle aches and tension
trembling or shaking
dry mouth
excessive sweating
shortness of breath
stomach ache
feeling sick
headache
pins and needles
difficulty falling or staying asleep


panic:

a racing heartbeat
feeling faint
sweating
nausea
chest pain
shortness of breath
trembling
hot flushes
chills
shaky limbs
a choking sensation
dizziness
numbness or pins and needles
dry mouth
a need to go to the toilet
ringing in your ears
a feeling of dread or a fear of dying
a churning stomach
a tingling in your fingers
feeling like you're not connected to your body


so why are we medicating our collective consciousness against these things? why now?

 

[luka]

Entertainment this perhaps goes towards answering your question about conceding ground and allowing yourself to be defined by opposition.

 

[luka]

our lens is xanex. our subject is now.

Alprazolam is a benzodiazepine (ben-zoe-dye-AZE-eh-peen). It affects chemicals in the brain that may be unbalanced in people with anxiety.Alprazolam is used to treat anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and anxiety caused by depression.

anxiety:

restlessness
a sense of dread
feeling constantly "on edge"
difficulty concentrating
irritability

dizziness
tiredness
a noticeably strong, fast or irregular heartbeat (palpitations)
muscle aches and tension
trembling or shaking
dry mouth
excessive sweating
shortness of breath
stomach ache
feeling sick
headache
pins and needles
difficulty falling or staying asleep


panic:

a racing heartbeat
feeling faint
sweating
nausea
chest pain
shortness of breath
trembling
hot flushes
chills
shaky limbs
a choking sensation
dizziness
numbness or pins and needles
dry mouth
a need to go to the toilet
ringing in your ears
a feeling of dread or a fear of dying
a churning stomach
a tingling in your fingers
feeling like you're not connected to your body


so why are we medicating our collective consciousness against these things? why now?

In other words is there an event on the horizon which is catalysing these responses

 

[luka]

And if we were, collectively, to stop medicating, what would happen? What conclusions might we come to?

 

[pattycakes_]

The people who bully me wear nice clean trainers so I will wear clunky boots.

I've never been happy with this.

Lol was just about to write 'that's why people become goths' in response to that last post on the previous page and then I saw this. It's gotta be a tale as old as time. Just different ways of expressing it

 

[luka]

I think the unnerved response is the most pertinent one incidentally. It's one of the key properties of this phase of cultural output. Where are we going and is it too late to stop it.

I would posit that it's analogous to the deep mourning quality present in the music and particularly the electronic music of the 80s we discussed. A rubicon is about to be crossed.there will be no going back.

 

[luka]

Lol was just about to write 'that's why people become goths' in response to that last post on the previous page and then I saw this. It's gotta be a tale as old as time. Just different ways of expressing it

Exactly. We can do better

 

[other_life]

the wife and i have been bonding over these two tunes specifically, lately. heavy rotation on custody drives. there's groove and forward momentum and musicality here. those little glidey synths. the sample cuts. the compressed punchiness of the rhythms. the parallelism/shape of the words.
and there's not even a specific 'trap'/-adjacent tune i can think of that's distinct enough to negatively compare these to. like
i guess this is just so god damn sleepy and syrupy it is unnerving. and nothing much differentiates its production from tons of other things.
i quit dxm and various pills because i didn't like how deep it pulled me into this same *completely* inorganic/machinic zone. unmoored, no referents. and the kind of 2k's rap i adore always has *some* kind of bodily-organic reference point, even at its most machinic

 

[luka]

completely* inorganic/machinic zone. unmoored, no referents.

This is exactly why I stay away from speed and cocaine now. It's how the satanic influence seeps in

 

[luka]

It cuts you off from the god frequency and puts you on a machinic one. It's an operation. A switching of inputs.

 

[sadmanbarty]

Political correctness as this codified and policed form of social etiquette. Pattycakes talking about prescription drugs to produce these uniform psychological frameworks. The Washington consensus. The neoliberal consensus. World Wide Web. Pooled sovereignty and supranationalism; international law. “Rules based international system”. The end of history.

A widespread sense of convergence.

The thing with these xanex rappers is that they’re freaks. They’re all wronguns. They don’t fit in; they’re innately incapable of confirming because they’re these weird goblin creatures. So the fascination comes with these creeps attempting to subdue themselves. The way they appropriate the conforming qualities of xanex and the like.

 

[thirdform]

There's a real flatness about this kind of music that reminds of HMGs theory about anti depressants cutting off the human soul from its highs and low and leaving it with a steady pulse in the middle regions

Kind of unnerving hollowness to it too

Do you mean in the sound of it? The digital inhuman glaze?

The sound and Stuff. Inhuman. Inorganic. Flat. Uncanny valley. Undead.

You know how some drugs seem to lock you into a inhuman frequency? So you're not flesh and blood anymore?

This kind of music is like watching adverts for the post human future and realising you're not going to be allowed to make the transition. Surplus to requirements. Cancelled stock.

I definitely think Barty is right in identifying this kind of music, the xanax zone, as the future that's here now, what he calls an inadvertent future in that it doesn't rely on sci fi trappings.

This is why it has the power to make people, me, genuinely uncomfortable in a way resident advisor endorsed landfill electronica never will.

Another way in which this future is disturbing, and this is crucial, is that it is about convergence and not resistance.

Look back at the beginning of the dematerialisation thread and you'll see how uncomfortable this makes people. This future is capitalist. It's not counter cultural. It's not an underground resistance. It's convergence. It's a folding in.

feels like people are focusing too much on xanax (which i have indulged in) here as this great game changer but in reality its a pretty tame drug with the most hellish of withdrawals, dependents (which i have not been) have told me it can be worse than heroin many times. In that regard it's not all that dissimilar to alcohol - although it's easier to put two tabs down yer gullet rather than drink 6 rums on an empty stomach in the morning (which i have done...)

Once again I'm reminded of reynolds quip: hip hop may not like you whitey, but it sure likes your money. Could this convergence and anti-resistance just be bohemians striving for a fragile sense of authenticity that hardcore brittle electronica can't provide them? RA endorsed stuff is mostly dull regardless of the future, after all they started off as a progressive trance magazine in 2001. But also, I can't say its surprising that they are hugely veinly trying to market their coverage to 'women/poc/diaspora' it's the typical white hankering for authenticity - I wasn't racially biased in my musical tastes before 2008, honest lads!

 

[luka]

Xanax I assume is being used as a metaphor here to some extent. For a sonic and emotional tendency

 

[sadmanbarty]

The thing with these xanex rappers is that they’re freaks. The way they appropriate the conforming qualities of xanex and the like.

this whole cultural territory is like the personification of the side effects. a xanexed society acknowledging what it could be if it wasn't successfully medicating itself.

 

[sadmanbarty]

imagine if xanex was some greek god or goddess and it's effects were all the things they held dominion over. xanex the goddess of sedateness and apathy. we're playing around with that framework. trying to mythologise our age and our culture.

 

[luka]

imagine if xanex was some greek god or goddess and it's effects were all the things they held dominion over. xanex the goddess of sedateness and apathy. we're playing around with that framework. trying to mythologise our age and our culture.

Soft edges curves no angularity no jarring impacts everything cushioned

 

[sadmanbarty]

i don't literally think the whole world's on xanax, it's just a useful shorthand for a range of cultural sensibilities.

it'd be a bit rubbish if carol made the thread and we just said "xanax doesn't do anything". it'd be a non-starter

 

[sadmanbarty]

a cock softener

 

[thirdform]

im well aware. I just think you guys are trying to read future too heavily through our nuum backgrounds where you'd really have to faithfully read it through that horrible blink182 tosh. weatus teenage dirtbag etc. it's the transposition of the teenage hormonal character to hip hop. it sells to people still too afraid of black masculinity and people who see the black drug taker as the noble savage (I'm sorry I have to put it in these terms.) A lot of future's stuff is going to be filed away to the shelf labelled retro-kitsch in 10 years time.

That being said Monster and Beast Mode are probably some of the more important releases of the 2010s.